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ness  Side 
of  Optics 


'D.C.Washington' 

(Roe  Fulkcrson) 


kERKElEY 

.IBRARY 


j  i>ij>i^ 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


CIVEN  WITH  LOVE  TO  THE 

OPTOMETRY  LIBRARY 

BY 

MONROE  J.  HIRSCH,  O.D.,  Ph.D. 


"D.  c.  washin(;ton' 

(Roi;  Fl'i.k.krson) 


THE 
BUSINESS  SIDE  OF  OPTICS 

BY 

"D.  C.  WASHINGTON" 

(ROE  FULKERSON) 

I  J 

A  WORK  intended  to  give 
■*^  the  young  man  starting  In 
the  optical  business,  or  the  old 
man  already  in,  some  plain  and 
common-sense  views  gained  from 
an  optical  experience  of  twenty 
years.  ::         ::         ::         :: 


TOPAZ  &   KAEMERLE,  PUBLISHERS 


OPTO;vl£TRY 


To  the 
CASH  REGISTER. 
The  tintinnabulation  of  its  bell  makes  music,  the  sweet- 
ness of  which  the  author  never  hopes  to  hear  equaled  till  he 
hears  the  chorus  of  the  golden  haired  angels    who    sing    in 
Paradise.    So  to  it  this  little  book  is  affectionately 
DEDICATED. 


FOREWORD. 


The  optometrist  who  goes  in  for  professionalism; 
who  is  in  the  business  for  the  good  of  humanity;  whose 
sole  desire  is  to  use  the  public  for  the  demonstration  of 
his  pet  theories  of  refraction  will  find  little  in  this  small 
volume  to  interest  him  and  would  better  drop  it  now. 

It  is  written  by  a  man  who  is  of  the  earth  earthy, 
who  is  frankly  in  the  business  for  the  money  there  is  in  it 
and  because  out  of  it  he  has  been  able  to  lay  away  enough 
surplus  to  take  care  of  his  old  age  and  yet  has  been  able 
to  say:  "This  one  is  on  me"  when  good  fellows  get  to- 
gether. 

The  matter  herein  contained  is  not  all  new ;  some  of 
it  the  author  has  written  before;  some  of  it  other  fellows 
have  written  before;  but  it  is  still  good  for  the  cash 
register. 

The  author  recently  passed  through  his  own  kitchen 
and  saw  Mirandy,  the  cook,  washing  the  contents  of  a 
large  basket  of  spinach.  Upon  inquiring  what  she  ex- 
pected to  do  with  a  peck  of  the  stuff  for  a  family  of  three, 
she  replied:  "Jest  you  wait  till  I  bile  her  down."  The 
following  pages  are  "biled  down"  experience  of  twenty 
years  and  if  some  man  in  the  profession  is  enabled  by  it 
to  make  more  money  out  of  his  optical  establishment  than 
he  did  before,  the  author  will  be  satisfied. 


The  book  makes  no  pretensions  to  be  a  literary  work 
at  all ;  being  simply  plain  facts  put  down  in  a  plain  way. 

The  author  makes  no  apology  for  the  frequent  ap- 
pearance of  the  perpendicular  pronoun  "I"  as  this  is  not 
literature,  but  a  plain  record  of  personal  experiences  in 
the  optical  business. 

Washington,  D.  C. 
1913. 


CONTENTS 

The  Business  Side  of  Optics. 

Chapter  Page 

I     Going  Into  Business  11 

II     Location  and  Lease 18 

III  Furniture    25 

IV  Buying  Goods  33 

V     Insurance    40 

VI     Signs  and  Window  Display 46 

VII     Advertising    54 

VIII     Salesmanship   63 

IX     Personality    72 

X     Records    79 

XI     How  To  Figure  Profits 85 

XII     Saving    93 

XIII  Partnerships    99 

XIV  Employes  and  Winners 105 

XV     Chasing  Rainbows 109 


The  Business  Side  of  Optics 


CHAPTER  I 


GOING  INTO  BUSINESS. 

A  fledgling  bird's  first  flight  from  the  parent  nest  is 
a  small  matter  when  compared  with  a  young  optometrist's 
first  venture  into  the  world  of  business  for  himself. 

The  usual  subject  of  debate  is  whether  he  will  open 
his  little  spectacle  emporium  in  some  small  town  and  wait 
for  it  to  grow  up  with  him,  and  he  grow  up  with  it,  or 
whether  he  open  up  in  his  home  city  and  depend  on  his 
friends  or  the  patrons  of  his  former  employer  for  sup- 
port. A  false  move  of  this  sort  may  mean  a  lifetime  of 
regret. 

No  wicked  man,  who  ever  saw  three  aces  and  a  faint 
heart  beaten  by  a  stiff  backbone  and  a  ' '  busted  flush, ' '  will 
ever  believe  there  is  any  hard  and  fast  rule  governing 
business. 

The  young  man  just  peeping  over  the  edge  of  the 
nest  for  his  first  flight  in  the  business  world  has  many 
things  to  consider.  How  about  the  money  end  of  it!  Is 
he  going  to  make  the  venture  on  a  narrow  margin  of  cap- 
ital ?    Has  he  a  family  to  support "? 

These  two  questions  have  a  bearing  because  the  man 
who  goes  into  a  small  but  growing  town  will  have  longer 
to  wait  while  he  is  developing  a  reputation  and  will  have 
longer  to  wait  for  his  business  to  grow  profitable,  but  in 
the  long  run  he  will  make  more  money ;  but  he  must  have 


12  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

a  reserve  large  enough  to  live  on  while  he  is  waiting  and 
if  he  has  only  himself  to  support  he  can  afford  to  wait 
longer. 

The  man  who  opens  his  business  in  a  city  where  he 
is  known  and  where  he  has  already  successfully  fitted 
people  with  glasses,  will  have  the  great  advantage  of 
being  able  to  do  some  business  from  the  first  day  he  opens 
his  store,  and  the  chances  are  that  he  will  be  able  to  make 
his  expenses  from  the  first  day  he  opens  his  doors,  if  he 
is  not  idiot  enougli  to  put  all  his  ready  cash  into  stock 
and  fixtures. 

The  young  optometrist  who  starts  business  in  the 
city  where  he  has  been  employed  will  have  less  to  fear 
from  the  first  year's  experience  than  he  will  the  second. 
The  first  year  he  is  full  of  hustle  and  enthusiasm  and  all 
his  friends  are  working  for  him  at  every  opportunity  but 
by  the  end  of  a  year  their  enthusiasm  has  oozed  out  and 
he  himself  is  not  on  the  jump  like  he  was  the  first  year 
and  things  are  liable  to  sag  a  little  and  the  business  run 
down. 

Then  if  he  has  based  his  expenditures  on  his  first 
year's  income  he  is  liable  to  be  caught  with  a  bundle  of 
unpaid  bills  on  the  tenth  of  some  month  and  I  lay  it  down 
as  an  indisputable  proposition  that  the  moment  an  op- 
tometrist gets  to  the  point  where  he  cannot  take  his  dis- 
counts on  the  tenth  of  each  month  he  would  better  sell 
out  and  take  in  floors  to  scrub !  When  he  gets  to  the  point 
where  he  cannot  take  that  six  per  cent  off  his  bills  he 
may  look  any  morning  when  he  comes  down  to  his  store 
to  find  the  business  undertaker  out  in  front  trying  to  find 
a  crevice  in  the  sidewalk  where  he  can  plant  his  red  flag! 

I  do  not  believe  that  one-half  the  young  men  who 


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GOING  INTO  BUSINESS  13 

have  branched  out  for  themselves  made  a  good  move.  I 
believe  if  they  had  worked  as  hard  for  their  former  em- 
ployer as  they  will  have  to  work  for  themselves  there 
would  have  been  no  occasion  for  their  leaving. 

There  is  a  long,  loud  wail  going  up  all  over  this  land 
of  the  knave  and  home  of  the  spree  for  employes  who  are 
not  merely  time  servers  but  men  who  will  take  a  real 
interest  in  the  optical  establishment  where  they  are  work- 
ing and  when  men  of  this  sort  are  found  they  are  not 
allowed  to  leave  unless  they  are  working  for  a  mercantile 
myope.  The  old  firm  can  afford  to  pay  them  more  than 
they  can  hope  to  earn  themselves  on  the  limited  capital 
they  are  enabled  to  invest.  When  such  a  man  leaves  the 
old  firm  he  not  only  ceases  to  bring  in  new  business,  but 
he  takes  with  him  a  part  of  the  business  which  is  already 
there  and  it  is  better  business  all  around  for  him  to  stay. 

No  man  is  much  of  a  man  who  is  satisfied  to  stay  for 
ever  as  a  mere  hireling  of  some  other  fellow  and  yet  it  is 
a  serious  matter  to  give  up  the  certainty  of  a  good  salary 
for  the  uncertainty  of  a  business  career  for  one's  self 
when  the  statistics  gathered  by  the  large  collection  agen- 
cies show  that  only  one  man  in  two  hundred  who  go  into 
business  ever  makes  more  than  a  mere  living  out  of  the 
venture. 

To  my  mind  the  solution  of  this  whole  matter  between 
a  clerk  who  contemplates  going  into  business  for  himself 
and  the  employer  who  dislikes  to  lose  him  is  the  profit 
sharing  plan  which  will  be  gone  into  more  deeply  in  a 
later  chapter. 

It  is  a  serious  matter  for  two  men,  who  have  been 
pleasantly  associated  in  business  for  years,  to  separate. 
The  wisest  plan  for  both  employer  and  employee  is  to  get 


14  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

together  and  have  a  long  heart  to  heart  talk  over  the  mat- 
ter before  any  definite  decision  is  made  and  see  if  it  can- 
not be  arranged  without  a  separation. 

The  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  few  employees  realize 
when  they  are  entitled  to  an  increase  in  salary  and  it  is 
for  want  of  this  that  most  of  them  branch  out  into  busi- 
ness for  themselves. 

To  the  young  man  who  feels  that  he  should  have  an 
increase  in  salary  or  that  he  should  jump  into  business 
on  his  own  hook,  let  me  say  that  there  is  no  sentiment  in 
business.  Sit  down  with  a  pad  and  pencil  and  see  how 
well  off  you  are.  Let  us  suppose  that  the  net  profit  in 
the  business  where  you  are  employed  is  ten  per  cent.  Let 
us  suppose  that  you  are  making  $2,000  a  year.  To  break 
even  on  your  salary  it  is  a  necessity  for  you  to  sell 
$20,000.00  worth  of  goods  every  year.  On  an  investment 
of  $2,000.00  you  would  no  doubt  feel  that  the  proprietor 
was  entitled  to  an  interest  of  ten  per  cent.  This  would 
make  $200.00  more,  so  that  to  hold  your  job  you  would 
have  to  sell  $20,200.00  worth  of  goods. 

Now  figure  out  what  your  sales  are ;  how  much  of  it 
is  due  to  your  personal  efforts  and  then  guess  in  addition 
how  much  the  house  will  want  for  its  profit  in  hiring  you 
and  you  can  come  pretty  close  to  the  pay  you  should  be 
getting.  Of  course,  the  figures  used  are  wrong — inten- 
tionally so— but  the  principle  is  there. 

Salary  is  not  a  question  of  length  of  service,  it's  not 
a  question  of  how  faithful  you  have  been;  it  is  a  cold- 
blooded question  of  dollars  and  cents  and  when  you  can 
show  your  employer  that  you  are  making  money  for  him 
and  that  he  is  not  giving  you  your  share  of  it,  if  he  then 
will  not  do  so,  get  out  and  set  up  your  own  shop. 


GOING  INTO  BUSINESS  15 

When  you  have  made  up  youi*  mind  to  go — go  at 
once  and  go  clean.  Take  no  copies  of  prescriptions,  no 
addresses  of  former  customers,  take  no  advantage  of  the 
man  for  whom  you  are  working,  that  you  would  not  like 
to  have  some  other  fellow  take  of  you,  and  you  will  give 
him  no  chance  to  knock  you  when  you  are  gone. 

When  you  are  ready  to  open  up  there  is  just  one 
caution,  which  cannot  be  included  in  any  of  the  other 
chapters,  that  I  want  to  give  you  here. 

Cut  out  the  kin  and  the  "in-laws"!  It  is  well  nigh 
impossible  for  a  man  to  maintain  the  same  discipline  with 
a  force  of  his  kinfolks  as  with  those  who  are  in  no  way 
related  to  him  and  who  stand  purely  on  their  merits. 

The  situation  is  not  improved  by  a  mixture  of  those 
who  are  and  those  who  are  not  kin  and  the  latter  is  invari- 
ably inclined  to  believe  that  favoritism  is  being  shown  the 
former  and  it  is  a  situation  which  breeds  discontent,  jeal- 
ousy and  even  open  outbreaks.  Such  tilings  ai'e  the 
greatest  possible  injury  to  any  business  organization  for 
without  harmony  success  is  an  impossibility. 

The  safest  system  is  not  to  employ  relatives  in  any 
branch  of  the  place.  It  is  unfair  to  both  the  employer 
and  the  employe  for  any  man  feels  the  greatest  incentive 
to  hustle  when  he  stands  absolutely  on  his  merits  and 
there  is  no  better  way  to  ruin  the  future  hopes  of  a  young 
man  than  to  put  him  in  business  with  his  father  or  uncle. 
If  it  is  desired  that  he  shall  succeed  to  the  business  let 
him  learn  it  in  some  other  optical  store  where  he  will  rise 
or  fall  in  proportion  to  what  he  does  rather  than  to  who 
he  is. 

The  practice  of  bringing  in  relatives  is  almost  uni- 
versal in  the  optical  business  and  many    optometrists 


16  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

have  lived  to  regret  it.  Right  now  I  call  to  mind  a  man 
who  built  a  big  business  in  a  city  and  later  had  a  mal- 
content relative,  whom  he  had  taken  into  his  store,  who 
later  went  out  and  opened  a  business  under  the  same 
name  and  took  in  thousands  of  dollars  which  rightfully 
belonged  to  his  former  employer. 

There  was  no  way  to  prevent  his  use  of  the  name  as 
it  was  his  own.  This  brings  us  to  another  point  well 
worth  considering.  Don't  open  up  business  under  your 
own  name.  I  don't  know  of  a  less  popular  piece  of  advice 
I  could  offer  to  a  young  man  just  starting  out  than  this 
and  yet  there  is  no  better  piece  of  advice  I  could  offer. 

Select  a  name  for  your  firm  like  the  Acme  Optical 
Co.,  for  example,  and  then  there  is  no  danger  of  some 
other  fellow  coming  along  and  stealing  your  advertising 
and  your  reputation.  We  will  suppose  your  name  is 
Jones  and  that  the  name  of  Jones  the  Optometrist  be- 
comes well  known  through  your  good  reputation  and 
your  advertising.  There  is  no  way  except  by  a  swift  lick 
with  a  piece  of  lead  pipe  that  can  keep  any  other  man  by 
the  name  of  Jones  from  going  into  the  optical  business 
in  the  same  town,  whereas  the  Acme  Optical  Co.  can  be 
copyrighted  and  may  not  be  used  by  another  man. 

Suppose  Mr.  King  had  not  called  his  eye  glass  the 
"So  Easy"  or  Mr.  Kirstein  had  not  called  his  the  "Shur 
On."  Suppose  they  had  been  put  out  as  the  Kirstein 
or  the  King.  There  is  no  law  or  any  other  way  of  pre- 
venting any  man  by  the  name  of  Kirstein  or  King  from 
making  and  marketing  an  eye  glass  and  taking  advantage 
of  the  reputation  and  advertising  of  these  two  firms. 

I  could  name  half  a  dozen  incidents  of  this  kind  in 
our  own  profession  which  have  cost  the  original  house 


GOING  INTO  BUSINESS  IT 

thousands  of  dollars,  and  one  man  talked  to  me  for  two 
hours  at  the  convention  in  Chicago  in  the  vain  hope  that 
I  could  offer  him  a  suggestion  to  circumvent  his  own 
brother  who  had  served  him  this  very  trick — and,  of 
course,  I  had  none  to  offer. 

It  is  a  matter  of  great  personal  pride  for  a  yoimg 
optometrist  to  see  his  name  in  front  of  his  store  but  he 
may  live  to  regret  it. 

There  is  yet  another  reason  than  the  one  assigned. 
Where  the  name  of  the  proprietor  appears  on  the  door, 
every  customer  who  enters  asks  to  see  Mr.  Jones  person- 
ally. This  may  be  flattering  to  Jones  but  when  the  place 
grows  large  and  he  cannot  personally  attend  to  every  cus- 
tomer it  becomes  embarrassing. 

Select  a  name  and  have  it  copyrighted  before  you 
open  your  doors  for  the  day  may  come  when  you  will  shed 
many  bitter  dollars  over  the  personal  pride  which  made 
you  use  your  own  name  as  a  firm  name. 


CHAPTER  II 

LOCATION  AND  LEASE. 

When  the  young  optometrist  has  fully  made  up  his 
mind  that  the  time  has  come  for  him  to  launch  his  own 
little  sliip  on  the  great  sea  of  business,  the  first  proposi- 
tion he  is  up  against  is  the  question  of  location. 

Let  me  say  at  the  outset  that  I  endorse  the  plan  of 
beginning  from  the  ground  up  rather  than  buying  out 
some  other  optometrist.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  an 
optometrist  who  is  willing  to  sell  has  little  that  is  worth 
buying.  In  most  cases  the  man  who  has  a  store  for  sale 
has  made  a  failure  out  of  it  and  your  own  cliances  are 
better  to  start  fresh  than  to  take  up  a  business  corpse 
and  try  to  resurrect  it. 

The  selection  of  a  location  is  without  doubt  one  of 
the  greatest  factors  in  success.  First  of  all  go  slow. 
There  is  plenty  of  time  for  you  to  start,  and  too  much 
haste  may  make  you  lose  a  valuable  stand. 

There  are  three  prime  factors  in  a  location.  The 
number  of  people  who  pass  the  store,  the  "crawl"  of  the 
city  and  the  length  of  the  lease. 

If  you  want  to  catch  fish  you  must  go  where  there  are 
fish.  If  you  want  to  sell  spectacles  you  must  go  where 
the  people  are,  for  it  is  only  people  who  wear  them.  As 
the  finest  tackle,  the  most  appetizing  bait  and  the  finest 
casting  ever  done  by  any  ardent  disciple  of  Isaak  Walton 


LOCATION   AND   LEASE  19 

will  never  catch  bass  in  a  horse  pond,  so  also  the  nicest 
store,  the  best  refracting  and  the  cleverest  salesmanship 
on  earth  will  not  sell  spectacles  on  a  side  street  where  no 
one  passes. 

Do  not  allow  the  low  price  of  rent  to  allure  you  off 
the  main  line  of  traffic.  Every  man,  woman  and  child  who 
passes  your  door  is  a  possible  customer  and  the  only  way 
to  tell  which  of  two  locations  is  the  better  one  is  to  stand 
a  man  before  each  and  have  him  count  the  people  who 
pass  during  the  hours  when  your  store  would  generally  be 
open  for  business. 

A  location  which  is  passed  by  five  thousand  people 
per  day  is  worth  exactly  one-half  as  much  rent  as  a  store 
which  ten  t"housand  people  pass  during  a  similar  period. 
This  is  as  sure  as  anything  can  be  in  this  world. 

Should  the  rent  of  two  locations  be  practically  the 
same  and  the  number  of  passers-by  be  about  the  same, 
then  the  question  is  whether  the  people  pass  in  crowds  at 
some  one  time  of  day  or  whether  they  come  by  in  a  steady 
stream  all  day  long.  The  latter  is  better  for  business. 
Where  they  come  in  one  big  rush  at  some  certain  time  of 
day,  like  the  employes  of  a  big  factory  or  office,  there  is 
less  chance  to  catch  them  than  where  they  are  spread  over 
the  whole  of  the  day. 

Next  should  be  considered  the  "crawl"  of  the  town. 
Every  city  in  the  great  nation  is  growing  in  some  direc- 
tion. The  restlessness  of  America  is  communicated  even  to 
its  cities  and  towns.  If  you  will  just  think  back  ten  years 
you  will  recall  that  the  busiest  corner  of  your  own  city 
was  in  a  different  location  from  what  it  is  today,  and  if 
you  will  note  carefully  you  will  find  the  general  direction 


20  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

of  the  "crawl"  and  try  to  get  your  store  in  a  location  so 
that  the  city  is  working  toward  you  rather  than  away 
from  you. 

Remember  the  old  Wanamaker  adage  that  "the  peo- 
ple go  where  the  people  go,"  and  get  as  close  as  possible 
to  the  busy  part  of  town.  Do  not  let  the  fact  that  there 
are  other  opticians  in  the  same  block  or  neighborhood 
deter  you,  for  it  is  my  belief  that  if  every  optician  in  a 
city  were  gathered  in  one  block  every  one  of  them  would 
do  more  business. 

Don't  go  upstairs! 

The  repairing  and  regular  merchandise  sales  in  any 
optical  store  should  pay  all  its  expenses.  If  you  depend 
on  the  sale  of  new  glasses  for  your  profits  there  is  going 
to  be  a  sad  lack  of  chicken  on  your  home  menu !  To  get 
repair  work  you  must  be  on  the  ground  floor  and  near  the 
main  arteries  of  traffic,  for  a  man  with  a  pair  of  broken 
glasses  has  no  time  to  fool  with  climbing  stairs  and  walk- 
ing to  back  streets.  The  fellow  who  is  located  right  under 
his  nose  is  going  to  get  the  job  for,  from  the  customer's 
point  of  view,  the  great  item  is  to  get  it  quickly. 

This  very  repair  work  is  one  of  the  greatest  feeders 
for  an  optometrist,  for  after  a  man  has  had  a  few  satis- 
factory jobs  done  in  a  store  he  is  almost  sure,  some  day, 
to  remark  that  his  glasses  are  getting  a  little  weak,  and 
to  have  another  examination  and  new  glasses  on  the  spot; 
and  then  the  man  upstairs,  or  on  the  back  street,  who 
originally  made  his  glasses,  has  lost  him  forever. 

The  man  upstairs  loses  all  opportunity  to  sell  opera 
glasses,  field  glasses,  thermometers,  meteorological 
instruments,  readers,  microscopes,  automatic  holders,  and 


LOCATION   AND   LEASE  21 

all  the  thousand  and  one  profitable  things  classed  under 
the  general  head  of  optical  merchandise,  for  they  are 
things  sold  almost  entirely  through  having  been  shown 
in  the  window. 

I  know  that  there  are  one  or  two  exceptions  to  the 
general  rule  that  an  upstairs  business  is  not  a  success, 
but  no  one  can  convince  me  that  these  same  firms  would 
not  have  made  a  far  greater  success  had  they  been  on  the 
ground  floor  and  carried  a  full  line  of  optical  merchan- 
dise. 

Having  gotten  in  front  of  the  ' '  crawl ' '  of  your  town, 
and  having  selected  what  seems  to  you  the  best  location, 
the  next  matter  to  be  considered  is  the  length  of  lease. 
Of  course,  where  it  is  possible  it  is  better  for  any  business 
man  to  buy  his  store  and  settle  the  question  of  location 
for  all  time,  but  I  do  not  remember  to  have  ever  seen  a 
case  where  a  young  man  just  breaking  into  business  had 
money  enough  to  do  so.  So  the  question  of  lease  comes 
up  and  the  one  thing  of  all  others  is  to  avoid  taking  a 
store  on  a  month  to  month  tenancy. 

The  landlord  never  lived  who  would  not  raise  the  rent 
on  a  prosperous  tenant.  Get  a  lease  as  long  as  you  pos- 
sibly can  and  then  have  your  lawyer  go  over  it  and  see 
if  it  will  hold  in  a  court  of  law.  Business  men  have  more 
trouble  over  leases  than  any  other  one  thing,  and  I  would 
choose  the  poorer  of  two  locations  if  the  lease  on  it  were 
longer.  Get  a  five  or  ten  year  lease  if  you  can  but  under 
no  consideration  risk  your  money  and  your  time  in  a  store 
when  you  do  not  know  how  long  you  can  remain  in  it. 

In  selecting  a  store  that  is  one  or  two  steps  up  or  down 
from  the  sidewalk  level,  do  not  take  it  unless  the  rent  is 


22  THE    BUSINESS    SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

at  least  one-half  less  than  a  store  on  the  street  level. 
People — especially  elderly  people,  with  whom  we  deal 
largely — will  not  climb  steps  to  get  into  a  store  when 
there  are  plenty  of  others  on  the  street  level. 

There  is  another  point  to  be  considered  in  a  lease 
which  seems  a  little  odd.  Do  not  allow  your  landlord  to 
reduce  your  rent  unless  you  first  have  a  new  lease  under 
the  new  terms.  I  know  of  one  case  where  a  man  leased 
a  counter  in  a  big  department  store  at  seventy-five  dollars 
a  month  and  was  to  pay  seventy-five  dollars  a  month  for 
five  years.  He  made  good  from  the  jump  and  one  fine 
day  the  proprietor  came  along  and  told  him  that  liis  rent 
was  too  high  and  that  he  was  going  to  reduce  it  to  sixty 
dollars.  The  optometrist  fell  into  the  trap  and  paid  the 
sixty  dollars — and  was  immediately  served  with  notice  to 
vacate,  as  the  payment  of  the  check  and  its  acceptance  by 
the  proprietor  constituted  a  breaking  of  the  lease  and  the 
optometrist  was  set  out  into  the  street.  Then  the  depart- 
ment store  opened  an  optical  department  of  its  own  at  the 
same  counter. 

Don't  let  any  real  estate  agent  convince  you  that  you 
can  do  business  on  the  "wrong"  side  of  the  street.  Every 
business  street  in  the  country  has  a  "right"  and  a 
"wrong"  side  and  the  extra  money  you  will  have  to  pay 
out  in  advertising  will  more  than  offset  the  extra  rent 
you  will  have  to  pay  on  the  ' '  right ' '  side. 

Don't  take  one-half  of  a  store  where  the  lease  is  in 
the  name  of  the  other  man  and  you  are  a  sub-tenant !  This 
sort  of  a  business  is  like  a  man  smoking  in  a  powder  mag- 
azine or  a  small  boy  sitting  on  a  tombstone  eating  green 
apples  and  singing  "Nearer  My  God  to  Thee."  It's  flirt- 
ing with  the  undertaker. 


LOCATION   AND  LEASE  23 

If  you  buy  another  man's  business  don't  pay  him  a 
cent  for  his  so-called  "good  will";  it's  not  a  marketable 
product.  If  a  place  is  for  sale  the  good  will  is  not  worth 
much.  I  know  one  man  who  paid  one  thousand  dollars  for  a 
lot  of  prescriptions  which  covered  fifteen  successful  years 
of  a  business  where  the  proprietor  had  died,  and  he  car- 
ried them  to  his  place  three  blocks  away  and  notified  the 
people  that  he  had  them  and  the  return  orders  from  them 
did  not  pay  for  the  expense  of  sending  out  the  notices. 

When  you  rent  a  store  there  are  two  things  which 
must  be  discounted  fifty  per  cent.  First  the  time  you  will 
get  into  it.  Any  experienced  man  will  tell  you  that  the 
only  time  to  do  papering,  painting,  floor  fixing  and  all 
that  sort  of  thing  is  before  a  stick  of  furniture  is  in  the 
place.  I  tell  you  from  experience  that  you  must  give 
your  mechanics  at  least  thirty  days  after  they  tell  you 
the  store  will  be  ready  or  you  will  have  paint  and  paste 
spilling  on  the  hats  of  your  lady  customers. 

Next,  last  and  most  important  of  all  the  don'ts  is, 
don't  think  for  a  moment  that  you  can  sit  down  in  ad- 
vance and  figure  out  what  it  is  going  to  cost  you  to  open 
a  store.  No  man  can  do  it  and  after  several  attempts  I 
tell  you  honestly  that  the  only  safe  way  is  to  figure  care- 
fully— and  then  add  exactly  fifty  per  cent !  I  know  you 
think  this  is  too  much!  I  know  you  don't  believe  a  word 
of  it,  but  it  is  true  just  the  same  and  it  has  not  been  six 
months  since  I  made  my  last  move  for  life  and  I  tell  you 
that  the  move  from  one  store  to  another  cost  me  at  least 
fifty  per  cent  more  than  I  could  possibly  figure  on.  When 
I  went  over  my  check  book  then  I  couldn't  believe  it  and 
even  now  don't  know  where  the  money  went,  but  the  hole 


24  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE  OF  OPTICS 

is  in  the  bank  roll  just  the  same,  and  to  a  young  man  just 
starting  out  on  a  limited  capital  this  is  of  vast  importance 
for  he  may  find  himself  stranded  on  a  fifty  per  cent  under 
estimate. 


CHAPTER  III 


FURNITURE. 

When  I  wrote  the  above  caption  to  this  chapter  I 
was  reminded  of  the  small  boy  who  in  school  was  asked : 
"What  is  the  gender  of  cat?"  He  replied:  "Show  me 
the  cat ! " 

It  is  very  hard  to  suggest  furniture  for  a  store  with- 
out first  seeing  the  store,  but  the  average  store  is  about 
square,  with  a  depth  three  times  as  great  as  its  width, 
and  so  we  will  furnish  one  of  that  sort  in  order  that  any 
variations  in  the  real  store  you  are  about  to  open  may 
be  changed  to  suit  conditions  rather  than  this  ideal  store 
we  are  now  about  to  fit  up. 

Store  furnishings  and  fittings  play  a  much  more  im- 
portant part  in  the  success  of  the  new  man  in  the  optical 
business  than  most  people  have  any  idea.  If  the  fur- 
nishings and  fixtures  are  too  elaborate,  and  too  beautiful, 
they  will  create  the  impression  in  the  minds  of  the  people 
who  pass,  and  who  look  inside,  that  the  store  is  a  high- 
priced  place  and  much  valuable  middle-class  trade  will 
pass  it  by  and  go  to  a  less  pretentious  looking  establish- 
ment. 

On  the  contrary,  should  the  fixtures  and  cases  be  too 
poor  looking  the  very  highest  class  of  trade  will  think  it 
is  a  cheap  shop  and  will  stay  out,  or,  even  if  they  do  come 
in,  the  optometrist  will  have  a  hard  time  selling  high  class 
and  high  priced  goods. 


26  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

So  I  insist  that  in  furnishing  an  optical  store  it 
should  be  the  main  object  to  strike  that  happy  medium 
between  too  fine  and  too  poor  in  order  that  all  classes  of 
people  will  feel  happy  in  it.  Good  but  not  gaudy  is  the 
point  to  be  striven  after. 

In  arranging  the  ideal  store  let  us  first  cut  off  twenty 
feet  from  the  back  end  of  it.  This  will  answer  for  the 
test  room  and  the  repair  department.  If  the  store  be 
twenty  feet  wide,  as  mine  is,  this  will  leave  an  examina- 
tion room  twenty  by  ten  and  a  repair  department  the 
same  size. 

I  have  never  partitioned  off  my  shop  or  my  examina- 
tion room  from  my  store.  There  are  people — especially 
women — who  dislike  being  taken  into  a  sejjarate  room  to 
have  their  eyes  examined,  but  there  is  a  better  reason.  I 
like  to  have  the  customers  in  the  front  end  of  my  store  see 
that  I  examine  eyes  and  also  see  that  I  grind  lenses  and 
do  my  own  work. 

I  have  recently  solved  this  riddle  to  my  own  satisfac- 
tion. 'While  in  a  furniture  store  not  long  ago  I  noticed 
that  they  had  small  rooms  in  which  to  exhibit  a  bed  room 
suite,  or  some  other  articles  of  furniture,  and  that  they 
built  them  out  of  screens,  on  the  bottom  of  which  were 
castors,  so  they  could  be  shifted  about  at  will.  I  had  two 
similar  screens  made,  one  ten  feet  long  by  four  feet  high, 
and  another  six  feet  long  by  four  feet  high.  The  first 
one  separates  my  examination  room  from  my  shop,  while 
the  other  stands  at  the  end  of  the  work  bench  and  sep- 
arates it  from  the  store.  These  screens  are  on  castors 
and  can  be  readily  pushed  aside  in  sweeping  or  cleaning, 
and  while  they  are  high  enough  to  effectively  separate 
the  shop  and  examination  room  from  the  store,  yet  being 


FURNITURE  27 

only  four  feet  high  they  do  not  entirely  hide  either  the 
shop  or  the  examination  room. 

They  are  the  best  solution  of  the  difficulty  I  have 
seen. 

This  disposes  of  the  back  end  of  the  store. 

The  first  thing  on  entering  the  store  should  be  the 
repair  department,  and  I  have  mine  so  arranged  that 
repair  jobs  can  be  taken  in  and  delivered  while  the  cus- 
tomer is  standing.  This  will  enable  you  to  deliver  and 
take  in  work  with  much  greater  rapidity. 

To  accomplish  this  end  I  had  put  just  inside  the  door 
of  my  store  a  glass  show  case,  which  was  made  for  a 
glove  case  and  is  only  sixteen  inches  across  the  top,  which 
enables  me  to  reach  across  it  and  adjust  glasses  and  my 
case  for  repair  work  is  the  first  wall  case  when  you  come 
into  the  store,  so  there  is  no  running  to  the  back  end  of  the 
room  for  a  job. 

The  case  of  which  I  speak,  and  over  which  I  transact 
most  of  my  business,  is  one  of  those  deep  all  glass  ones 
which  run  all  the  way  down  to  the  floor  and  on  the  top 
glass  shelf  of  it  I  have  chains,  automatics,  hooks,  fancy 
cases  and  all  that  sort  of  optical  merchandise,  so  that  it 
is  right  under  the  eyes  of  my  customers  and  many  sales 
are  made  as  a  result  of  the  customers  seeing  things  which 
they  were  not  aware  they  wanted.  In  other  words,  it 
creates  an  artificial  need  for  these  things. 

The  lower  shelves  of  this  case  contain  opera  glasses, 
field  glasses  and  a  sample  line  of  readers  and  magnifiers 
which  are  thus  given  a  prominent  position.  I  have  found 
that  few  people  come  down  town  deliberately  to  buy  these 
things  and  they  must  be  forced  on  their  attention  if  they 


28  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

are  sold.  This  applies  particularly  to  lorgnettes  whieb 
have  a  prominent  place  in  this  first  case. 

Behind  this  case,  which  is  ten  feet  long,  I  also  have 
my  case  of  pi-escription  cards,  where  they  are  easy  of 
access,  but  of  these  prescription  records  we  will  deal  fur- 
ther in  another  chapter. 

Next  in  line  along  the  wall  comes  the  cash  register. 
No  man  who  has  ever  done  business  with  a  cash  register 
will  ever  be  without  one  thereafter.  It  saves  a  world  of 
mistakes,  makes  it  almost  impossible  to  deliver  a  charge 
job  without  a  record  of  it  and  is  a  living  exemplification 
of  that  prayer,  "lead  us  not  into  temptation."  "When  I 
see  how  some  men  in  our  line  subject  their  clerks  to 
temptation  the  only  wonder  to  me  is  that  there  are  not 
more  men  bounced  for  "knocking  down." 

In  line  with  the  show  case  are  two  fitting  tables — 
the  kind  sold  by  a  prominent  optical  house  and  illustrated 
in  half  the  catalogues  on  your  shelves.  They  have  glass 
tops,  which  permit  a  display  of  frames  and  mountings 
and  a  set  of  drawers  for  cases  and  such  things. 

I  have  two  more  wall  cases  on  this  side  of  the  store 
and  three  large  mirrors  for  I  have  found  that  there  has 
never  lived  a  woman  who  does  not  like  to  preen  in  front 
of  a  mirror,  and  I  once  heard  an  old  store  fixture  man 
lay  down  the  law,  as  follows:  "Where  you  don't  need 
the  space,  put  a  mirror,"  and  I  believe  it  is  a  good  one. 

In  one  of  these  wall  cases  I  have  frames  of  all  sorts 
in  separate  drawers  and  also  a  lens  cabinet  with  metal 
drawers,  which  you  vnll  also  find  in  your  catalogues.  My 
reason  for  keeping  these  things  up  in  front  is  because 
when  I  make  an  examination  and  take  an  order  I  make 


FURNITURE  29 

out  the  shop  job  envelope  and  I  myself  select  the  mount- 
ing and  the  lenses  and  put  them  into  the  job  envelope 
before  it  is  sent  to  the  shop.  Then,  if  there  is  any  break- 
age, the  shop  man  must  come  to  me  for  more  material 
and  it  enables  me  to  keep  a  better  line  on  the  stuff  de- 
stroyed in  the  shop. 

This  finishes  one  side  of  the  store  down  as  far  as 
the  shop,  wherein  I  use  benches,  motor  and  all  appliances 
that  are  in  the  catalogues  of  which  I  have  spoken  before. 
I  shall  not  go  into  the  question  of  shop  work  as  that  is  a 
separate  proposition  and  to  anyone  interested  I  can  only 
suggest  that  very  valuable  information  on  the  subject 
may  be  obtained  from  any  one  of  half  a  dozen  firms  who 
are  manufacturing  optical  machinery. 

In  this  connection  let  me  also  suggest  that  no  more 
valuable  little  book  has  come  on  the  market  recently  than 
Pettet's  "The  Mechanics  of  Fitting  Glasses,"  which  deals 
with  the  subject  of  forms  of  glasses  and  their  adjustment 
and  no  young  man  just  starting  into  the  business  can  fail 
to  gather  valuable  information  from  its  pages. 

On  the  opposite  side  of  my  store  I  have  no  cases  of 
any  sort  as  I  prefer  what  might  be  called  the  "one-sided 
store." 

Immediately  inside  the  door  I  have  the  usual  um- 
brella stand  and  just  back  of  this  a  large  settee  flanked 
on  either  side  by  a  chair,  and  then  follows,  in  turn,  my 
own  desk,  the  typewriter  desk,  telephone  table  and  a  sec- 
tional book  case  for  catalogues  and  such  things. 

On  the  wall  back  of  these  I  have  a  black,  cloth-cov- 
ered thermometer  board  on  which  are  displayed  all  sorts 
of  thermometers,  barometers,  hygrometers  and  meteoro- 


30  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

logical  instruinents  in  general,  for  I  have  found  that  in 
common  with  opera  glasses  they  are  things  that  a  want 
has  to  be  created  for.  You  must  keep  them  in  plain  view 
and  explain  them  with  care  to  anyone  who  seems  in  the 
least  interested  if  you  hope  to  build  a  sale  on  them.  There 
is  no  clock  in  my  store.  I  have  found  that  if  you  tell  a 
man  you  will  have  a  job  for  him  in  ten  minutes  he  will  sit 
and  watch  the  clock  and  when  the  ten  minutes  are  up  he 
will  begin  to  walk  the  floor  like  a  caged  lion  in  a  zoo ;  but 
if  you  will  keep  a  couple  of  current  comic  magazines  lying 
around  and  keep  the  clock  out  of  his  sight  you  can  keep 
him  for  twenty  minutes  and  he  will  be  surprised  that  you 
did  the  work  so  quickly. 

I  have  seen  a  fakir  at  a  fair  examine  eyes  in  an  open 
booth  with  a  throat  mirror  strapiDed  around  his  head;  I 
have  seen  experts  who  honestly  believed  they  could  cor- 
rect astigmatism  down  to  a  twelfth  with  a  retinoscope  in 
a  dark  room;  I  have  seen  so-called  retinoscopic  experts 
declare  one  case  of  astigmatism  lenticular  and  the  next 
corneal  and  never  smile;  I  have  seen  an  old  grey  beard 
fit(?)  with  a  simple  hand  card,  cases  that  the  best  men 
in  the  country  had  failed  to  satisfy,  and  from  all  this  I 
deduce  that  every  man  has  his  own  ideas  about  refrac- 
tion and  I  am  not  going  into  the  fitting  room  on  this  fur- 
niture proposition  at  all.  All  I  propose  to  say  is  that  I 
have  an  ophthalmometer,  the  findings  of  which  I  pay  no 
attention  to  if  they  disagree  with  my  test  case.  I  have  a 
combined  ophthalmoscope  and  retinoscope  which  are 
invaluable  for  the  advance  information  they  give  me  of 
refractive  conditions  and  the  cataracts  and  spotted 
retinas  they  show  me.    These  instruments  I  have  mounted 


FURNITURE  31 

on  small  tables  ■which  can  be  raised  and  lowered  at  will 
and  they  add  much  to  the  looks  of  the  store. 

I  also  have  a  test  case  with  which  I  earn  my  living ! 

Floor  covering  is  without  doubt  one  of  the  biggest 
propositions  the  optometrist  has  to  face  and  if  a  nice 
polished  hardwood  floor  is  used  you  will  find  your  rugs 
slipping  and  your  elderly  patients  falling  all  over  the 


The  best  thing  in  my  opinion  is  linoleum.  You  can 
buy  it  in  any  shade  to  harmonize  with  the  rest  of  your 
fixtures,  and  you  can  buy  it  in  any  design  on  earth.  If 
you  get  the  expensive  kind  it  will  cost  you  about  three 
dollars  a  yard,  but  in  this  kind  the  designs  run  all  the 
way  through  the  material  and  no  matter  how  long  it  is 
on  the  floor  it  never  gets  dingy.  It  will  wear  like  iron 
also  and  like  most  other  things  in  the  way  of  furniture 
and  fixtures, ' '  the  best  is  the  cheapest. ' ' 

Just  one  more  point  and  we  will  leave  the  subject  of 
fixtures.  If  there  is  any  place  on  earth  where  cleanliness 
is  next  to  godliness  it  is  in  an  optical  store !  There  is  no 
place  on  earth  where  dirty  windows,  dirty  floors,  unswept 
corners  and  such  things  make  such  a  bad  impression  as 
in  our  business. 

Hire  someone  especially  to  clean.  Have  floors  and 
windows  cleaned  every  day ;  have  show  cases  and  every- 
thing in  the  place  dusted;  have  every  sample  pair  of 
glasses  polished  to  the  limit  and  every  opera  glass  and 
barometer  wiped  off  fresh  every  morning.  A  lorgnette 
cannot  be  sold  if  the  lenses  in  it  are  dirty,  a  dingy  opera 
glass  looks  a  mighty  poor  thing  to  a  person  selecting  a 
wedding  present,  and  the  magnifier  or  reader  which  is 


32  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

decorated  with  finger  prints  will  be  much  less  interesting 
to  a  possible  customer  than  it  would  be  to  a  detective 
looking  for  a  criminal. 

My  earnest  entreaty,  once  you  have  the  place  thor- 
oughly cleaned,  is  to  at  once  go  to  work  and — clean  it ! 


CHAPTER  IV 


BUYING  GOODS. 

There  are  just  two  phases  to  the  buying  end  of  the 
optical  business  and  these  are  purchasing  the  goods  and 
paying  the  bills. 

The  first  precaution  is  that  it  is  better  to  cry  for 
goods  than  to  cry  over  them.  The  smaller  the  quantities 
of  goods  bought  the  easier  it  is  to  pay  for  them.  The 
prices  on  all  optical  goods  are  the  same  in  half  dozens 
unless  you  buy  in  gross  quantities  and  even  in  these  there 
are  only  a  few  articles  which  can  be  bought  at  a  sufficient 
reduction  to  justify  laying  in  goods  in  such  quantities. 
Goods  lying  on  the  shelves  of  a  properly  conducted  store 
have  six  per  cent  interest  for  invested  capital  charged 
up  against  them,  and  in  many  cases  this  interest  eats  up 
all  the  profits  of  the  lower  price  before  the  goods  are  sold. 

There  are  probably  twenty  thoroughly  reputable  job- 
bing houses  advertising  in  the  trade  papers  in  the  optical 
business.  The  prices  of  these  houses  on  standard  goods 
are  the  same.  There  is  not  five  per  cent  variation  be- 
tween the  highest  and  the  lowest  priced  man  in  the  lot. 
This  reduces  the  buying  end  of  the  business  to  a  very 
simple  point  and  my  suggestion  to  any  man  just  starting 
out  in  business  is  to  select  the  nearest  good  jobber  and 
give  him  all  your  business. 

The  average  small  optician  buys  from  five  to  ten 
thousand  dollars'  worth  of  goods  a  year.    This  sum  when 


34  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

put  into  the  hands  of  any  one  man  makes  the  accomit 
worth  while,  but  scattered  around  among  a  dozen  men 
the  account  is  of  no  particular  value  to  any  of  them  and 
the  optician  gets  no  favors,  no  particular  consideration. 

But  when  he  centers  his  buying  in  one  house  his 
account  is  of  sufficient  value  so  that  the  jobbing  house  is 
ready  and  willing  to  show  him  favoritism  just  as  you 
show  favoritism  to  the  best  family  on  your  own  books. 

From  time  to  time  opportunities  will  come  for  a  job- 
ber to  throw  a  bargain  in  your  direction.  He  may  be 
clearing  out  a  line  of  good  eases  that  he  will  not  handle 
again  and  is  willing  to  sell  them  under  ordinary  prices, 
and  again  he  may  have  a  chance  to  buy  something  him- 
self at  a  reduction  and  in  these  cases,  of  course,  he  throws 
the  favors  in  the  way  of  the  man  who  pays  the  most 
money  into  his  firm. 

There  are  times  in  the  life  of  every  yoimg  man  with 
a  growing  business  when  he  needs  more  credit — when  his 
hopes  and  his  realization  failed  to  meet  on  schedule  time 
and  in  such  an  emergency  the  jobber  with  whom  he  has 
been  spending  all  Ms  money  will  be  glad  to  extend  accom- 
modation to  him;  whereas,  if  he  deals  here,  there  and 
everywhere  there  is  no  one  in  particular  interested  in 
him,  the  first  signs  of  weakness  on  his  part  would  indicate 
that  he  might  go  under  and  they  all  jump  in  to  see  which 
can  get  his  money  first.  The  result  is  that  when  they  all 
sail  down  on  the  weak  man  he  goes  down  and  out  under 
the  pressure. 

Select  one  good  man  and  give  him  all  the  business 
you  can  and  you  will  find  that  he  will  make  it  worth  your 
while  in  many  ways. 


BUYING   GOODS  35 

Now,  as  to  the  other  end  of  the  question.  That  is 
the  paying  of  bills. 

The  habit  of  giving  the  optician  six  per  cent  discount 
off  his  bills  if  he  pays  them  ten  days  after  the  statement 
is  rendered,  is  so  universal  as  to  be  almost  invariable. 
I  wonder  how  many  men  in  the  profession  know  just  what 
six  per  cent  at  ten  days  means.  Do  you  realize  that 
six  per  cent  at  thirty  days  means  six  times  that  in 
twelve  months  or  seventy-two  per  cent  a  year,  and  that 
six  per  cent  at  ten  days  is  just  three  times  that  amount, 
or  tivo  hundred  and  sixteen  per  cent  per  annumf  Did 
you  ever  realize  that  your  jobber  is  offering  you  just  two 
hundred  and  sixteen  per  cent  per  annum  to  pay  your  bills 
promptly? 

No  ancient  Shylock,  no  modern  loan  shark  in  his 
wildest  dreams  of  avarice,  ever  hoped  to  get  such  a  rate 
of  interest!  No  man  who  has  brains  in  his  head  can 
afford  to  fail  to  grab  it  and  yet  the  jobbers  tell  me  that 
at  least  one-half  the  optometrists  in  the  country  do  not 
take  their  discounts!!!  Mother  of  Moses!  what's  the 
matter  with  us  ?  Are  we  a  set  of  driveling  business  idiots ! 

There  is  not  a  bank  in  the  country  which  is  not  crying 
for  a  chance  to  loan  money  to  reputable  business  men  on 
their  personal  notes  and  yet  those  men  refuse  to  pay 
that  bank  six  per  cent  per  annum  on  money  that  they 
might  make  six  per  cent  on  in  ten  days  and  have  the  use  of 
it  the  other  three  hundred  and  fifty-five  days  of  that  year 
for  nothing!  They  will  not  pay  six  per  cent  on  money 
borrowed  from  a  bank  when  they  can  use  it  to  pay  off  an 
interest  charge  of  two  hundred  and  sixteen  per  cent!  I 
will  grant  that  this  two  hundred  and  sixteen  per  cent  is 
in  theory  only,  as  we  only  have  twelve  chances  to  discount 


86  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

each  year,  but  what  is  the  diflference  between  this  sum 
and  the  seventy-two  per  cent  which  can  actually  be 
earned? 

It  seems  almost  impossible  that  a  man  can  be  so 
myopic  as  to  allow  this  discount  to  escape  him. 

There  is  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  all  young  optome- 
trists to  be  lured  away  by  low  prices.  When  a  manufac- 
turer offers  you  a  gold  filled  frame  for  three  dollars  a 
dozen  and  another  offers  you  one  for  six  the  chances  are 
that  you  are  getting  just  twice  as  much  gold  on  one  as 
you  are  on  the  other.  No  matter  what  the  arguments  are 
by  the  men  who  are  selling  them,  no  matter  what  they 
may  look  like,  this  is  the  probable  condition  and  all  too 
late  the  new  buyer  of  optical  goods  learns  that  the  sweet- 
ness of  low  price  has  long  since  gone  while  the  bitterness 
of  poor  quality  clings  forever.  Low  priced  goods  do  not 
pay.  Let  your  constant  tendency  in  buying  be  to  buy 
better  things  rather  than  to  buy  cheaper  ones.  If  you 
buy  the  good  goods,  you  will  sell  them — you  will  have  to 
do  so !  If  you  buy  the  poor  stuff  your  tendency  will  be, 
as  the  stuff  is  cheap,  to  cut  your  prices  to  meet  the  low- 
priced  man  in  competition  with  you  and  the  general  ten- 
dency of  your  business  will  be  down  instead  of  up. 

Buy  standard  goods.  Goods  with  a  reputation  be- 
hind the  maker.  There  are  half  a  dozen  firms  in  this 
country  manufacturing  optical  goods  of  quality  so  un- 
questioned, of  scientific  accuracy  so  certain,  that  the 
name  and  trade  mark  on  an  article  is  a  guarantee  of  the 
quality  of  the  stuff.  Men  who  make  such  goods  deserve 
the  patronage  of  every  optometrist  who  is  trying  to  ele- 
vate his  profession  and  give  his  patrons  what  they  pay 


BUYING   GOODS  "  37 

for.  Cling  to  such  closer  than  a  brother,  for  they  are,  in 
very  truth,  your  brothers. 

Again,  buy  the  goods  which  are  generally  advertised. 
Do  not  let  any  one  hocus  pocus  you  into  the  belief  that 
when  you  push  a  generally  advertised  article  you  are 
building  up  the  reputation  of  the  maker  rather  than  your 
own  reputation.  It  is  not  true.  He  is  making  your  sales 
for  you,  and  every  dollar  he  spends  in  his  general  adver- 
tising is  making  business  for  you.  If  he  piles  up  the 
sales  it  is  very  foolish  of  you  not  to  be  ready  and  able 
to  supply  the  demand  he  creates !  Get  on  the  band  wagon ! 
It  is  very  foolish  for  a  man  to  swim  up  stream.  It  is  just 
as  well,  and  better,  to  get  into  the  current  of  good  busi- 
ness created  by  this  great  amount  of  general  advertising 
and  gather  in  the  golden  dollars  which  come  from  it. 

Remember  that  a  small  quantity  and  a  large  assort- 
ment of  goods  is  the  ideal  stock.  Buy  in  small  quantities 
and  let  the  jobber  carry  your  stock  for  you.  This  is  the 
only  answer  to  the  time-honored  question,  "Why  is  a 
jobber? "  He  is  to  carry  stock  for  the  wise  retailer  who  is 
too  clever  to  allow  his  own  shelves  to  get  cluttered  up 
with  goods. 

It  is  all  very  well  for  you  to  take  stock  and  count 
in  your  assets,  say,  three  thousand  dollars  worth  of  goods 
on  the  shelves.  It  looks  very  nice  on  the  paper,  but 
just  you  try  to  get  three  thousand  dollars  out  of  it  and 
you  will  find  that  cashing  a  three  thousand  dollar  stock 
is  a  mighty  serious  proposition.  It's  like  the  boy  who 
had  a  bull  pup  which  was  worth  one  hundred  dollars  to 
a  man  who  was  willing  to  pay  one  hundred  dollars  for 
a  bull  pup.  Your  stock  is  worth  three  thousand  dollars 
because  it  cost  you  that  much,  but  how  much  would  it 


38  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

be  worth  to  a  man  who  wanted  to  buy  it?  It  would  be 
as  hard  a  task  to  find  a  man  who  would  be  willing  to 
pay  three  thousand  dollars  for  your  stock  as  to  find  a 
man  who  was  willing  to  pay  one  hundred  dollars  for 
a  bull  pup.  A  dollar  in  a  savings  bank  is  worth  ten  of 
the  dollars  you  have  tied  up  in  useless  and  unsalable 
stock. 

There  is  no  doubt  but  that  the  greatest  difficulty 
confronting  the  young  optometrist  is  from  keeping  his 
profits  from  getting  all  tied  up  in  stock.  There  is  a 
steady  tendency  for  his  stock  account  to  grow  and  grow 
till  the  time  comes  when  he  has  accumulated  a  lot  of  odds 
and  ends  that  are  not  salable,  but  still  are  carried  along 
from  year  to  year  as  a  paper  profit,  and  no  man  can  pay 
his  bills  or  buy  beer  for  his  pals  with  paper  profits.  Let 
your  buying  be  as  little  as  you  can  possibly  get  along 
with  and  you  will  find  this  wUl  answer. 

There  is  a  valuable  little  booklet  entitled,  ' '  Scientific 
Stock  Keeping,"  which  can  be  procured  from  any  jobber, 
and  I  would  advise  every  optometrist  to  get  a  copy. 

Never  buy  goods  that  you  have  not  already  money 
enough  in  the  bank  to  pay  for.  Of  course  you  may  get 
it  before  the  tenth  of  the  following  month,  but  there  is 
also  a  chance  that  you  may  not. 

Keep  constantly  in  mind  that  the  clever  young  chaps 
who  come  to  see  you  from  the  vai-ious  optical  houses  are 
just  like  the  clever  young  chaps  to  whom  you  are  paying 
salaries.  They  are  hired  by  their  employers  for  the 
express  purpose  of  selling  you  goods,  and  while  I  believe 
it  is  most  unusual  in  these  days  of  better  business  for  a 
traveling  man  to  deliberately  oversell  a  customer,  yet 


BUYING  GOODS  39 

they  are  paid  to  sell  (in  many  cases  paid  according  to 
how  much  they  sell),  and  you  must  remember  this  all  the 
time  you  are  doing  business  with  them. 

Just  remember,  as  a  parting  admonition,  that  old 
mercantile  aphorism  that  "It  is  better  to  cry  for  goods 
than  to  cry  over  them." 

Keep  in  mind  that  the  man  who  can  not  take  his 
discounts  had  better  throw  up  the  sponge  and  go  to  work 
for  some  other  fellow,  for  he  has  made  a  mistake  in 
going  into  business  for  himself. 

Remember  that  the  man  who  can  take  his  discounts 
and  does  not,  is  a  fool  net! 

Buy  small  and  pay  prompt  and  the  very  men  who 
have  pressed  you  to  buy  larger  will  think  more  of  you, 
and  as  they  think  more  of  you  will  press  you  still  harder 
to  buy  in  larger  quantities. 


CHAPTER  V 


INSURANCE. 

Are  yon  fully  protected  from  fire!  Certainly!  you 
speak  up  promptly,  of  course,  and  insist  that  any  man 
who  would  try  to  do  business  without  fire  insurance  pro- 
tection would  be  an  idiot— with  which  I  quite  agree. 

Will  you  pardon  the  impudence  if  I  put  the  ques- 
tion, How  do  you  know  you  are  fully  protected?  If  you 
signed  a  ten  thousand  dollar  contract  with  a  man  with- 
out reading  it,  any  one  of  your  friends  would  say  that 
you  had  bats  in  your  loft,  wouldn't  he?  Yet  it  is  a 
safe  bet  of  twenty  to  one  that  neither  you  or  any  other 
man  you  can  mention  in  the  optical  business  has  ever 
read  his  fire  insurance  policy.  He  has  simply  taken  it 
on  faith  in  the  agent  who  sold  it  to  him,  not  knowing 
that  there  is  as  much  difference  in  fire  insurance  policies 
as  there  are  in  lenses.  Not  one  man  in  ten  has  the  least 
idea  what  all  the  stuif  in  it  means,  if  he  has  read  it. 

Get  yours  out  and  read  it  over  with  the  agent  who 
sold  it  to  you,  and  get  him  to  explain  what  the  various 
clauses  mean.  It's  a  better  time  to  do  it  now  before  the 
fire  rather  than  to  have  it  done  in  a  court  of  law  after- 
wards. 

We  will  suppose  for  an  example  that  you  have  a  ten 
thousand  dollar  fire  insurance  policy  on  your  business. 
In  every  policy  there  is  what  is  called  "the  eighty  per 
cent  average"  clause.    This  clause  says :    "The  company 


INSURANCE  41 

shall  not  be  responsible  for  a  greater  proportion  of  any 
loss  than  the  amount  the  insured  bears  to  eighty  per 
cent  of  the  cash  value  of  the  property  insured  at  the  time 
of  the  loss."    Now,  what  in  Sam  Hill  does  that  mean! 

It  means  just  this,  that  eight  thousand  dollars  insur- 
ance must  be  carried  on  a  ten  thousand  dollar  business 
to  receive  full  benefits  under  this  provision  in  case  of 
partial  loss. 

Suppose  you  carried  six  thousand  dollars  insurance 
on  a  ten  thousand  dollar  business  and  sustained  a  loss 
of  one  thousand  dollars.  This  clause  says  you  must  carry 
eight  thousand  dollars  or  the  policy  will  cover  only  as 
the  amount  carried  bears  to  eight  thousand  dollars;  if 
you  cari-y  six  thousand  and  should  carry  eight  thousand 
you  carry  six-eighths,  or  three-fourths,  and  so  you  get 
three-fourths  of  the  loss,  or  seven  himdred  and  fifty  dol- 
lars instead  of  one  thousand.     Get  it? 

In  case  of  a  total  loss  or  a  loss  in  excess  of  eighty 
per  cent,  then  this  clause  does  not  operate.  It  is  effec- 
tive only  in  case  of  a  partial  loss. 

Many  policy  holders  believe  if  they  are  within  the 
eighty  per  cent  clause — that  is,  carry  eight  thousand  and 
have  a  nine  thousand  loss,  they  will  receive  the  full  loss 
in  case  of  fire ;  but  this  is  an  error,  as  they  receive  only 
the  sum  on  which  they  pay  premiums. 

Do  you  know  that  a  fire  insurance  company  has 
sixty  days  in  which  to  settle — may  replace  damaged 
property  with  like  material — may  take  all  or  part  of  the 
damaged  property  and  pay  all  or  part  of  the  damage 
claimed  in  proportion?     It  is  true. 

Do  you  know  under  what  conditions  your  policy  is 
void  and  the  company  released  from  all  claims  I     Here 


42  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

are  a  few  of  them :  In  case  of  a  written  or  stated  mis- 
representation of  facts — if  the  interest  of  the  insured  is 
not  truly  stated — if  work  in  a  manufacturing  plant  like 
your  shop  is  done  at  night — if  a  factory  cease  to  be  oper- 
ated for  more  than  ten  lays — if  mechanics  be  employed 
on  the  premises  for  more  than  fifteen  days — if  the  hazard 
is  increased  with  the  knowledge  of  the  insured — where 
a  store  or  a  building  is  unoccupied  for  more  than  ten 
days — if  any  oils  or  explosives  other  than  kerosene  (of 
the  United  States  standard)  be  kept  in  the  place — by  the 
falling  of  a  building,  except  as  the  result  of  fire. 

When  one  looks  over  that  list  the  only  thing  to 
wonder  at  is  that  any  man  ever  gets  any  insurance,  with 
so  many  holes  for  the  company  to  creep  out  through, 
yet  it  is  an  almost  unheard-of  thing  for  a  company  to 
fail  to  pay.  You  did  not  know  all  these  things,  of  course, 
for  you  had  never  read  yom*  policy. 

Any  policy  may  be  cancelled,  by  either  the  company 
or  the  policy  holder,  at  five  days '  notice.  When  the  policy 
is  cancelled  by  the  company  a  pro  rata  proportion  of  the 
premium  is  retained  for  the  time  the  policy  was  in  force. 
When  it  is  cancelled  by  the  policy  holder  a  short  rate 
premium  is  retained  by  the  company  for  the  time  the 
policy  was  in  force. 

When  a  loss  from  fire  is  paid  on  a  policy,  the  face 
of  the  policy  is  reduced  to  the  extent  of  the  loss  for  the 
balance  of  that  year  unless  additional  premiums  are 
paid.  This  means  that  if  you  carry  a  ten  thousand  dol- 
lar policy  and  have  a  five  thousand  dollar  loss  which  is 
paid,  you  then  have  only  five  thousand  dollars  insurance, 
in  case  of  another  fire  with  total  loss  before  the  year  is 


INSURANCE  4S 

out,  but  this  risk  may  be  avoided  by  the  payment  of  new 
premiums. 

A  fire  insurance  policy  does  not  cover  loss  from 
lightning  unless  it  is  so  stated  on  the  face  of  the  policy. 

Get  that  insurance  policy  of  yours  out  of  the  safe 
deposit  box  and  read  it  over  with  care,  and  if  there  are 
things  in  it  that  you  do  not  like,  or  that  you  would  like 
to  have  changed,  see  the  agent  and  have  it  done.  Almost 
any  of  the  foregoing  conditions  may  be  waived  and 
stricken  out  of  the  policy  by  special  agreement  obtained 
from  the  company  to  cover  the  especial  case.  There  is 
ordinarily  no  cost  to  this. 

If  your  building  is  unoccupied;  if  you  care  to  have 
the  boys  in  the  shop  work  after  ten  at  night ;  if  you  want 
your  policy  to  cover  your  signs  and  awnings;  if  for  any 
reason  your  hazard  is  increased;  if  you  want  to  keep 
some  gasoline  in  the  store — get  your  agent  to  indorse 
your  policy  to  cover  the  case  and  you  are  well  protected ; 
but  be  sure  that  it  is  written  on  the  face  of  the  policy,  for 
no  company  assumes  responsibility  for  the  statements  of 
its  agents  other  than  those  written  in  the  policy — if  they 
did,  the  agents  would  never  be  able  to  sell  insurance! 
Don't  take  the  agent's  word  for  it — he  may  be  forgetful 
and  again  he  may  just  be  a  liar ! 

Above  all  things,  get  your  insurance  from  a  man  who 
is  reputable — who  has  a  permanent  place  of  abode  and 
does  not  carry  his  office  in  his  coat  tail  pocket ;  who  will 
be  fair  to  both  you  and  the  company. 

Fire  insurance  is  the  greatest  comfort  in  the  world 
when  you  get  it.  If  you  don't  get  it  the  fault  is  yours, 
as  no  company  wants  to  swindle  you.    Read  your  policy 


44  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

just  the  same  as  you  would  read  any  other  contract 
involving  ten  thousand  dollars. 

There  is  no  need  for  any  man  to  waste  time  writing 
ahout  life  insurance.  There  are  plenty  of  men  in  this 
world  who  would  not  kill  a  pussy  cat  and  allow  her  six 
kittens  to  starve,  who  don't  carry  a  cent  of  life  insurance 
for  their  own  wives  and  children.  There  is  no  fool-killer 
and  so  their  cases  will  have  to  go  over  till  Nemesis  over- 
takes them.  From  that  point  of  view  there  is  nothing  to 
be  said  on  the  sul)jeet  of  life  insurance,  but  if  a  man 
owes  money  for  his  stock,  if  he  has  bought  a  "Why  pay 
rent"  and  still  has  a  mortgage  on  it,  or  if  he  is  obligated 
in  any  way  to  any  one  for  any  money  which  would  be  a 
hardship  on  his  wife  to  pay  in  case  of  his  death,  then  he 
is  not  treating  either  his  wife  or  his  creditor  right  if  he 
is  not  carrying  insurance  enough  to  pay  the  bill  the 
moment  he  is  dead.  There  is  a  forru  of  policy  called 
"Term  Insurance,"  which  is  designed  to  cover  just  such 
cases,  and  the  policies  are  sold  at  a  very  low  rate.  If 
some  jobber  had  enough  confidence  in  you  to  trust  you 
with  a  stock  of  goods  when  you  opened  a  store,  it  would 
be  a  gracious  act  for  you  to  take  out  such  a  policy  and 
pay  the  premiums,  sending  him  the  policy  to  hold  till 
your  debt  to  him  is  cleared  or  the  policy  can  be  made 
simply  payable  to  your  estate  and  he  will  get  his  money 
anyway. 

Sickness  and  health  policies  do  not  appeal  particu- 
larly to  the  man  who  is  working  for  himself,  but  they 
are  good  things  for  a  man  on  a  salary  who  has  a  family 
to  support,  as  they  guarantee  a  regularity  of  income  in 
case  of  illness  and  most  of  them  embody  in  themselves 
an  accident  policy  also. 


INSURANCE  45 

I  am  a  firm  advocate  of  accident  insurance.  I  have 
never  known  of  a  man  getting  hurt  who  carried  an  acci- 
dent policy.  All  around  him  people  are  having  safes 
fall  on  their  heads,  people  are  being  beaten  over  the 
head  by  policemen,  and  folks  are  getting  run  down  by  a 
fool  in  a  stink  wagon,  but  not  so  with  the  man  who  car- 
ries accident  insurance !  He  bears  a  chai'med  life !  You 
cannot  kill  him  with  a  brick!  Even  the  optical  business 
won't  kill  him,  for  I  have  spent  twenty-five  dollars  a 
year  for  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  years  and  have  never 
even  stubbed  my  toe  since  I  took  out  a  policy.  I  go  to 
optical  conventions,  too,  and  take  all  sorts  of  chances ! 


CHAPTER  VI 


SIGNS  AND  VvINDOW  DISPLAY. 

I  lay  it  down  as  an  indisputable  proposition  that 
there  is  not  a  sane  man  in  the  United  States  who  does 
not  know  what  three  signs  mean.  First  is  the  striped 
pole  which  indicates  to  the  man  whose  spinach  needs 
gathering  that  here  can  be  found  a  barber.  If  that  bar- 
ber hung  out  a  sign  stating  that  he  was  a  tonsorial  artist 
and  neglected  those  red,  white  and  blue  stripes  he  would 
lose  money  every  day  of  his  life. 

If  you  see  a  wooden  Indian  standing  in  front  of  a 
store  you  know  that  here  you  can  obtain  those  little  roils 
of  tobacco  which  sell  for  a  dime,  or  those  rolls  of  cabbage 
which  sell  for  a  nickle;  that  here  you  can  obtain  those 
Turkish  coffin  nails  which  are  sending  our  youths  to  an 
early  grave,  and  that  here  you  can  obtain  ammunition 
for  that  asthmatic  old  jimmy  pipe  of  yours.  No  other 
sign  on  earth  could  tell  you  these  same  things ! 

The  third  is  the  pair  of  spectacles  which  hang  in 
front  of  the  optical  shop,  or  is  engraved  on  the  brass 
signs.  The  man  or  woman  does  not  live  who  does  not 
know,  the  moment  this  conventionalized  spectacle  front 
is  sighted,  that  here  the  weak-eyed  public  may  seek  solace 
with  some  hope  of  finding  it. 

The  optometrist  or  optician  who  fails  to  plaster  this 
thing  on  the  front  of  his  store  is  sadly  lacking  in  busi- 
ness acumen!    Remember  that  your  customers  look  for 


SIGNS    AND    WINDOW    DISPLAY  4T 

it!  Eemember  that  your  only  reason  for  putting  out  a 
sign  is  to  let  the  public  know  what  your  business  is,  and 
that  this  will  do  it  to  a  better  advantage  than  anything 
else  on  earth.  Remember  that  you  are  not  selling  your 
name — you  are  selling  spectacles;  and  while  it  is  all 
right,  of  course,  to  put  your  name  on  your  signs  and  on 
your  window,  keep  constantly  in  mind  that  the  name 
should  be  secondary  and  the  pair  of  spectacles  primary. 
You  i^ut  out  a  sign  to  help  you  sell  your  goods  and  there 
is  no  other  sign  which  will  so  well  accomplish  that  object. 

This  is  all  I  have  to  say  on  the  sign  subject  so  far 
as  the  steady  signs  outside  of  the  window  go,  but  just 
inside  of  my  windows,  on  each  side,  are  two  porcelain 
signs  of  white  on  black  which  I  am  absolutely  batty 
about!  They  have  brought  me  more  business  than  any 
one  thing  I  have  ever  used,  and  they  are  both  alike. 
They  read,  "Quick  Repairing,"  and  there  is  not  one 
business  day  in  ten  that  people  do  not  come  into  the  store 
and  mention  them  to  me,  and  show  by  their  conversation 
that  it  was  the  sign  which  brought  them  in. 

Now  when  it  comes  to  the  matter  of  window  dress- 
ing, there  is  no  question  but  what  the  average  optome- 
trist knows  less  about  it  than  any  merchant  on  earth.  He 
washes  his  window,  puts  in  a  piece  of  velvet  on  which  is 
scattered  a  few  odds  and  ends  of  his  stock,  and  lets  it 
go  at  that.  He  puts  everything  in  his  window  except 
brains,  and  the  task  of  dressing  the  window  is  generally 
left  to  some  boy  who  doesn't  know  the  difference  between 
the  principles  of  advertising  and  the  jack  of  spades. 

The  average  optical  window  falls  down  because  it 
is  too  grasping.  It  seems  to  be  trying  to  show  one 
sample  of  every  article  carried  in  stock  and  the  resultant 


48  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

window  is  one  which  is  simply  a  jumbled  mass  of  junk 
which  attracts  the  attention  of  no  one.  The  matter  of 
window  dressing  comes  under  the  general  head  of  adver- 
tising and  the  same  rules  that  apply  to  one  apply  to  the 
other.  The  public  is  in  a  hurry  and  it  hurries  through 
its  paper  and  past  your  window  every  day.  In  a  single 
newspaper  advertisement  you  would  never  tliink  of 
attempting  to  describe  and  price  everything  in  your 
store — you  take  up  a  single  article  or  a  single  subject 
and  attempt  in  that  one  ad  to  enlighten  the  public  on 
that  one  subject. 

Api^ly  the  same  theory  to  your  window  dressing. 
The  world  is  hurrying  past  your  window  bent  on  its 
own  business  and  your  window  must  contain  something 
to  attract  it.  There  is  little  doubt  but  that  the  simplest 
way  to  accomplish  this  is  to  put  only  one  sort  of  an 
article  in  the  window  and  put  this  in  in  great  quantities. 
If  you  opened  your  paper  in  the  morning  and  saw  a 
whole  page  on  which  was  printed  nothing  but  the  two 
words  "Toric  Lenses"  line  after  line,  column  after 
column,  till  the  entire  page  was  filled,  it  would  be  bound 
to  attract  your  eye,  would  it  not  I  This  is  exactly  true 
of  your  window.  If  you  put  in  it  nothing  but  one  article 
— let  us  say,  eye-glass  chains — the  effect  would  be  the 
same  on  the  eye.  A  single  eye-glass  chain  is  lost  among 
a  lot  of  other  optical  goods  and  would  attract  no  par- 
ticular attention,  nor  would  half  a  dozen,  but  if  you  put 
them  in  row  after  row,  chain  after  chain,  imtil  the  whole 
window  was  filled  with  them,  the  effect  on  the  passer-by 
would  be  exactly  the  same  as  if  he  had  seen  the  words 
"Eye  Glass  Chains"  printed  over  and  over  in  his  morn- 
ing paper,  and  you  will  certainly  impress  on  that  man's 


SIGNS    AND    WINDOW    DISPLAY  49 

mind  the  fact  that  you  have  them  and  should  he  be  in 
need  of  one  you  will  then  and  there  make  a  sale. 

Oddly  enough,  just  the  reverse  is  good  windo-w 
dressing.  As  there  is  such  an  insane  desire  on  the  part 
of  the  advertising  public  to  get  as  much  as  possible  into 
a  certain  amount  of  newspaper  space,  or  as  much  as 
possible  into  a  show  window,  the  reading  and  gazing 
public  have  become  accustomed  to  seeing  these  spaces 
crowded  and  if  you  picked  up  your  morning  paper  and 
saw  exactly  in  the  center  of  the  page  one  small  word 
surrounded  by  a  sea  of  white  paper  you  would  certainly 
see  what  that  word  was,  and  so  also  if  you  saw  a  large 
window  nicely  dressed  in  some  pleasing  color  and  in  the 
middle  of  that  window  one  small  article  you  would  at 
once  conclude  that  the  article  must  be  something  unusual 
to  be  given  such  prominence,  and  would  walk  over  to  see 
what  it  was. 

These  things  are  simply  putting  brains  into  the 
window.  If  all  the  men  in  your  neighborhood  are  decor- 
ating their  windows  in  one  general  way,  change  yours 
and  do  something  different.  The  men  who  pass  your 
window  are  busy.  If  you  hope  to  attract  their  attention 
you  must  use  some  originality. 

Moving  objects  of  any  sort  are  good  window  dis- 
plays. These  little  radiometers  are  good  things  for  the 
window  for  that  reason.  One  of  the  best  optical  win- 
dows ever  used  in  the  east  was  where  the  owner  filled 
his  window  full  of  small,  cheap  compasses  with  his  ad  on 
one  side.  From  the  chandelier  he  swimg  a  big  horse- 
shoe magnet  which  swung  over  the  compasses  like  a 
pendulum  and  of  course  as  it  passed  the  compasses  went 
into   hysterics   and   pointed   everywhere   except   north. 


50  THE    BUSINESS    SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

The  window  attracted  large  crowds  all  the  time  it  was 
used. 

The  seasons  have  a  large  bearing  on  window  decora- 
tions also.  In  the  first  place,  the  cloth  used  in  the  decor- 
ation should  be  cool,  soft  tones  in  summer,  and  dark  reds 
and  warm  tones  in  winter,  for  a  person  is  unconsciously 
attracted  to  a  cool  spot  in  summer  just  as  they  turn  to 
a  warm  one  in  winter. 

Field  glasses,  magnifiers,  pedometers  and  such 
things  make  good  windows  in  the  spring,  when  people 
are  planning  vacations  and  are  tramping  around  through 
the  woods,  just  as  smoked  glasses  make  a  good  exhibit 
on  the  hot,  sunny  days  of  summer.  In  the  winter,  when 
the  theatrical  season  is  on  and  when  Christmas  is  com- 
ing, of  course  such  things  as  opera  glasses  and  gold 
lorgnettes  should  have  a  prominent  place  in  your  dis- 
plays. 

The  greatest  difficulty  in  decorating  a  show  win- 
dow is,  without  doubt,  to  obtain  that  difficult  to  define 
thing,  individuality.  If  a  show  window  is  absolutely 
perfect  it  is  also  absolutely  useless.  One  follows  another 
as  naturally  as  a  pickaninny  follows  a  brass  band.  It  is 
so  perfect  that  a  man  would  pass  it  a  hundred  times  and 
never  look  into  it.  It  is  just  like  half  a  hundred  other 
show  windows  in  the  same  neighborhood.  It  attracts  no 
more  attention  than  the  lamp  post  on  the  corner.  The 
lamp  post  is  just  like  all  the  other  lamp  posts  in  the  city, 
but  if  you  were  to  run  across  a  lamp  post  painted  red, 
while  all  the  others  in  the  city  were  black,  you  would  see 
that  red  lamp  post  every  time  you  passed  it.  You  would 
wonder  why  it  was  red  and  you  would  doubtless  think  it 


SIGNS    AND    WINDOW    DISPLAY  51 

was  the  best  looking  lamp  post  in  town.  That  is  indi- 
viduality. 

There  is  no  better  place  on  earth  for  an  optician  to 
display  his  individuality  than  in  his  window — not  only 
display  it,  but  cash  it! 

The  optometrist's  show  window  is  a  small  one  and 
he  can  do  almost  anything  he  pleases  with  it,  and  what 
he  seems  to  have  pleased,  in  most  cases,  is  to  make  it  as 
much  like  every  other  show  window  as  one  carbon  cojjy 
is  like  another. 

To  be  individual  one  does  not  have  to  be  freaky.  If 
the  stores  near  you  have  round  windows,  have  yours 
built  square;  if  the  other  fellows  have  brass  signs, 
make  yours  of  some  other  metal.  Remember  that  red 
lamp  post. 

Just  a  few  days  ago  a  woman  on  a  car  said,  "I  don't 
remember  the  name  of  the  place,  but  there  is  a  stuffed 
eagle  in  the  window."  Get  some  one  thing  in  your 
window  which  will  become  a  landmark  so  that  people 
will  remember  your  store  by  it. 

When  it  comes  to  the  question  of  price  tags  in  the 
window,  there  is  little  to  be  said,  for  it  all  depends  on 
the  store,  its  location,  its  general  style,  and  all  that  sort 
of  thing. 

I  never  advertise  prices  on  my  spectacles  in  any 
way.  Not  in  the  papers,  or  in  my  window,  yet  I  have 
not  the  least  hesitation  in  putting  prices  on  any  article 
of  practical  merchandise  I  put  in  the  window.  I  can  sell 
two  dozen  pedometers  any  week  I  will  fill  my  window 
with  them  and  place  a  little  sign  I  have  with  a  man  taking 
long  steps  and  the  wording,  ' '  How  far  do  you  walk  each 
day  ? ' '  and  then,  ' '  Pedometers  $1.00. ' '  When  I  have  opera 


52  THE   BUSINESS    SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

glasses  or  field  glasses  in  the  window  I  do  not  use  price 
tags,  as  the  prices  on  these  articles  are  too  high  to  prove 
alluring,  yet  when  one  sticks  by  me  for  a  couple  of  sea- 
sons I  have  no  hesitation  in  cutting  the  price  on  it  and 
putting  it  in  the  window  as  a  special. 

It  would  seem  that  a  good  rule  about  price  tags 
would  be  to  put  them  on  those  articles  which  people  are 
liable  to  think  higher  priced  than  they  really  are  and 
leave  them  off  of  those  articles  which  are  higher  priced 
than  they  seem.  The  truth  is,  that  all  a  show  window 
can  do  is  to  bring  the  people  into  the  store.  The  sale 
must  be  made  inside,  and  the  window  which  brings  in 
the  people  is  the  window  you  want. 

Just  one  other  thought  about  the  window.  Neither 
you  nor  any  other  man  who  is  in  business  would  fail  to 
keep  himself,  his  clothes  and  his  linen  in  first-class 
shape  and  scrupulously  clean,  for  you  know  that  the  first 
impression  one  gets  is  the  lasting  one.  If  you  see  a  man 
shabbily  clad,  his  collar  and  cuffs  in  mourning,  you  are 
going  to  judge  that  man's  character,  his  standing  in  the 
community,  and  even  his  morals,  by  his  dress.  These 
things  are  the  signs  which  he  hangs  out  that  the  public 
may  know  what  the  man  is,  and  they  judge  him  accord- 
ingly. What  a  man's  clothes  are  to  him,  his  window  is 
to  his  store.  As  his  clothes  are  the  first  thing  to  catch 
the  eye  of  a  person  and  as  he  is  generally  judged  by  them, 
so  also  his  window  is  the  first  thing  to  catch  the  eye  of  a 
possible  purchaser,  and  it  is  by  it  that  his  whole  estab- 
lishment is  judged. 

If  that  window  be  fly-specked,  if  it  be  poorly  and 
inartistically  decorated,  then  the  possible  customer  is 
going  to  decide  that  the  man  who  occupies  that  store  is 


SIGNS    AND    WINDOW    DISPLAY  53 

a  man  uucleauly  in  his  lia])its,  behind  the  times  in  his 
profession  and  hardly  worth  while  dealing  with. 

Should  that  window  be  clean,  should  the  exhibit  be 
artistic,  should  the  goods  in  it  be  up-to-date  articles  of 
optical  merchandise,  then  the  man  who  stops  and  gazes 
in  that  window  will  decide  that  the  rest  of  the  establish- 
ment is  on  a  par  with  the  window  and  will  not  hesitate 
to  enter  and  will  expect  to  get  good  up-to-date  service, 
and  I  must  say  that  in  this,  as  in  most  other  things, 
the  public  is  right. 

A  window  should  be  decorated  at  least  twice  a  week, 
and  as  you  change  your  advertisements  in  the  papers 
with  frequency,  so  should  you  change  your  advertise- 
ments in  the  windows  with  frequency,  for  very  nearly 
the  same  people  pass  your  store  everj'  day  and  you  can- 
not expect  them  to  remain  interested  or  pause  before 
your  window  very  often  if  you  do  not  make  some  change 
in  it. 


CHAPTER  VII 


ADVEETISING. 

In  the  last  fifteen  years  the  writer  hereof  has 
received — he  will  not  say  earned — several  thousand  dol- 
lars writing  about  optical  advertising. 

In  the  same  length  of  time  he  has  wasted  at  least 
twice  as  many  thousands  in  unprofitable  advertising  he 
has  done  himself.  In  the  last  two  years  he  has  adopted 
a  system  of  advertising  wliich  has  paid  him  handsomely 
for  every  dollar  he  has  put  into  it,  and  no  man  living  can 
induce  him  to  change  it. 

In  those  fifteen  years  he  has  tried  out  almost  every 
plan,  every  medium  and  every  form  of  advertising,  and 
most  of  them  he  has  abandoned  because  he  has  found  that 
he  could  not  trace  directly  to  them  the  results  which  they 
should  have  brought. 

Advertising  is  like  the  tariff  question — a  purely 
local  issue.  AVhat  will  pay  the  optometrist  in  one  town 
or  city  is  money  thrown  away  in  the  next.  There  is  no 
hard  and  fast  rule  of  advertising.  There  are  a  few  gen- 
eral rules,  however,  which  prevail  in  every  town  and  city 
in  the  country. 

First,  let  me  say  that  in  my  opinion  this  "General 
Publicity,"  of  which  the  advertising  solicitors  prate  so 
much,  is  all  bosh!  It  is  not  worth  ten  cents  a  million 
circulation.     Pay  no  money  for  advertising  which  does 


ADVERTISING  SS 

not  show  up  on  your  examination  books!  There  is  the 
nub  of  the  whole  matter! 

Start  tomorrow  to  check  up  on  your  advertising. 
Find  out  from  the  men  and  women  whose  eyes  you 
examine  how  they  came  to  patronize  you.  Use  all  the 
means  in  your  power  to  get  the  information,  but  if  you 
can  get  it  in  no  other  way,  simply  say  to  them  that  you 
are  spending  a  lot  of  your  good  money  in  advertising  and 
you  want  to  know  what  portion  of  it  is  paying  you,  and 
as  you  notice  that  they  are  new  customers  of  the  place 
you  want  to  know  how  they  came  to  patronize  you.  Now 
when  you  have  found  this  out,  make  a  note  of  it  on  the 
examination  book  and  then  when  the  end  of  the  month 
comes  tabulate  these  figures  and  you  will  find  some  very 
unexpected  results ! 

This  is  the  only  method  on  earth  to  determine  what 
advertising  is  paying  and  what  is  not.  If  the  advertis- 
ing does  not  bring  you  results,  quit  it.  I  have  discov- 
ered in  my  life  that  there  is  not  a  return  of  one  per  cent 
of  the  money  invested  in  the  following  form  of  advertis- 
ing: Bill  boards,  programs  of  all  kinds,  signs  tacked  on 
fences,  advertising  in  and  around  hotel  offices,  on  regis- 
ters, blotters,  clocks  and  such  things.  I  have  never  had 
an  advertising  novelty  of  any  description  which  has  paid 
me  at  all. 

My  bookkeeping  on  my  advertising  has  convinced  me 
that  there  are  only  two  forms  of  advertising  which  will 
pay  the  optometrist.  One  is  straight  newspaper  adver- 
tising, and  the  other  is  circular  letters  or  booklets,  and 
my  own  experience  has  brought  me  sixty  per  cent  more 
returns  from  newspaper  advertising  than  it  has  from 
circulars. 


56  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

When  we  take  up  the  question  of  newspaper  adver- 
tising it  is  attempting  to  explain  in  a  single  chapter  a 
profession  that  it  takes  a  lifetime  to  learn.  I  have  tried 
it  in  every  way  and  all  I  shall  attempt  to  point  out  to  you 
is  that  certain  forms  of  newspaper  advertising  have  paid 
me  big  returns  on  the  money  invested,  while  others  have 
failed  completely. 

The  advertising  that  I  am  now  doing  and  which  is 
paying,  is  straight  educational  advertising,  without  an 
illustration  or  a  price  in  it.  It  is  in  reference  to  toric 
lenses  as  opposed  to  flat,  Kryptok  as  opposed  to  cements, 
finger-piece  mountings  as  against  the  old  styles  with 
their  loose  screws,  box  studs  instead  of  the  ordinaiy 
kind,  examinations  without  drops  as  against  the  inferior 
ones  given  by  the  oculist. 

It  is  an  advertisement  of  service  and  not  an  adver- 
tisement of  price.  It  is  a  question  of  trying  to  create 
a  desire  in  the  minds  of  the  readers  for  something  bet- 
ter, more  scientific,  something  for  their  own  good  and  not 
a  question  of  price.  It  is  an  attempt  to  create  in  the 
minds  of  the  public  that  my  name  stands  for  quality  and 
that  anything  purchased  here  is  sure  to  be  right  because 
it  came  from  here. 

This  form  of  copy  is  a  winner.  It  is  bringing  me 
daily  results  which  more  than  pay  for  the  cost  of  the 
advertising.  Every  month  when  I  check  up  my  cost  of 
advertising  against  my  returns  I  find  that  I  am  on  the 
velvet  side. 

I  have  cut  out  illustrations  in  my  advertising  because 
I  have  never  seen  illustrations  for  optical  advertising 
which  were  not  either  "cute"  or  uninteresting.  I  do  not 
think  that  pictures  which  can  be  classed  as  "cute"  have 


ADVERTISING  57 

any  place  in  the  subject  matter  of  so  serious  a  thing  to 
talk  about  as  sick  eyes,  and  the  uninteresting  illustra- 
tions only  distract  attention. 

So  much  for  newspaper  work,  except  that  I  would 
advise  any  man  who  contemplates  spending  a  hundred 
dollars  in  newspaper  advertising  to  spend  the  first  five 
with  Page,  for  his  book  on  optical  advertising,  as  it  will 
save  him  far  more  than  that,  and  as  it  contains  more 
good  ideas  about  composition  and  type  than  any  I  have 
ever  seen. 

The  booklet  proposition  brings  results — results  de- 
pending on  the  booklet.  Cheap  booklets,  cheap  printing 
and  cheap  postage  is  the  cause  of  more  failures  in  this 
line  than  anything  else. 

I  believe  that  a  good  series  of  follow-up  letters  will 
help  any  man's  newspaper  advertising,  although  I  do 
not  believe  that  it  will  take  the  place  of  it.  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  average  form  letter  sent  out  is  profit- 
able. Remember  that  it  must  be  a  good  letter,  short,  to 
the  point,  and  written  with  infinite  care. 

In  the  first  place,  I  do  not  believe  they  are  worth  ten 
cents  a  thousand  when  sent  out  under  a  one-cent  stamp. 
If  you  will  observe,  when  looking  over  the  mail  which 
comes  to  your  own  desk  in  the  morning,  you  will  see  that 
you  dump  the  stuff  which  comes  to  you  under  one-cent 
postage  into  the  waste  basket,  unopened,  and  why  you 
should  expect  people  to  read  your  circulars  which  come 
in  the  same  way  is  a  mystery  compared  with  which  the 
immortal  question  of  who  killed  Cock  Robin  is  as  plain 
as  day! 

Second,  I  do  not  believe  that  letters  with  more  than 
one  sheet  in  them  are  worth  paying  postage  on.     They 


58  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

are  so  bulky  that  no  one  save  a  farm  hand  with  a  Sunday 
on  his  hands  would  wade  through  them  to  find  out  what 
it  is  all  about. 

If  you  want  to  get  the  people,  send  out  a  good 
process  or  typewritten  letter  signed  with  a  pen,  and 
under  two-cent  postage,  and  you  will  stand  a  chance  to 
get  your  money  back. 

I  had  a  friend  who  started  in  to  market  a  book 
which  appealed  to  one  class  of  men  only.  His  first 
attempt  was  to  send  out  50,000  unsealed  circulars  under 
a  one-cent  stamp.  From  these  he  sold  271  books  for  a 
dollar  which  cost  him  thirty-three  cents  each.  Printing, 
folding  and  postage  left  him  with  a  net  loss  of  $-118.43 
on  the  deal. 

His  next  attempt  was  with  25,000  of  the  same  circu- 
lars under  a  two-cent  stamp.  These  made  him  1,715 
sales  and  a  profit  of  $549.05. 

You  will  notice  that  the  simple  affixing  of  a  two- 
cent  stamp  instead  of  a  one  made  the  same  circular  bring 
thirteen  times  as  many  replies.  This  taught  him  a  les- 
son and  his  next  venture  was  a  strong  letter  of  just  ten 
lines.  He  hired  twenty  men,  giving  them  two  cents  and 
a  half  a  letter,  to  write  these  in  long  hand,  and  the  man 
who  wrote  the  letter  also  addressed  the  envelope. 

He  sent  out  25,000  of  these  also  under  a  two-cent 
stamp,  and  they  sold  him  6,405  books  and  gave  him  a 
clear  profit  of  $2,591.35! 

The  first  object  in  a  circular  letter  is  to  have  it  read 
and  any  expense  to  which  you  may  go  in  assuring  this 
point  is  money  well  invested. 


ADVERTISING  59 

A  one-cent  stamp  is  a  through  ticket  to  the  waste 
basket,  with  no  stop-over  privileges  on  the  busy  man's 
desk. 

No  man  who  wants  to  succeed  in  the  optical  busi- 
ness can  practice  economy  in  his  postage  account.  Fif- 
teen minutes  ago  a  lady  went  out  of  your  store  who  told 
you  that  Mrs.  Smith  had  sent  her  to  you  for  glasses. 
Right  there  you  should  have  used  every  bit  of  ingenuity 
you  possessed  to  find  out  which  Mrs.  Smith  that  was 
and  where  she  lived.  Before  you  close  the  place  tonight 
you  should  sit  down  and  write  that  Mrs.  Smith  a  letter 
telling  her  that  the  lady  had  been  in  at  her  suggestion 
and  that  you  appreciated  this  evidence  of  her  kindly 
feeling. 

It  makes  no  difference  who  this  Mrs.  Smith  is,  she 
would  appreciate  that  note.  If  she  is  one  of  your  local 
four  hundred  fashionables  she  will  consider  that  she  is 
a  sort  of  patroness  of  your  place  and  will  send  in  her 
other  friends.  If  she  lives  in  the  allej^,  back  of  Herkimer 
street,  it  is  likely  that  she  don't  get  a  letter  once  a  year 
and  yours  will  be  an  event  for  her  and  she  will  hustle 
for  you.  It  is  the  only  method  I  know  which  will  start 
people  working  for  you  without  a  salary. 

Take  this  matter  to  yourself  as  an  example.  You 
have  referred  your  friends  to  this  butcher,  baker  or 
candlestick  maker,  yet  you  have  never  received  such  a 
note.    Would  it  not  please  you  to  get  one? 

It  is  an  advertising  dodge  which  will  pay  the  optom- 
etrist plethoric  dividends  on  the  postage  invested,  and  I 
have  found  by  advertising  records  on  my  examination 
books  that  exactly  seventy  per  cent  o^"  my  new  business 


60  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

comes  through  the  recommendations  of  my  former 
patrons. 

Next  in  hne  comes  the  all  powerful  "two-year  let- 
ter." Every  day  the  optometrist  should  sit  down  and 
write  a  personal  letter  to  the  persons  whose  eyes  he 
examined  two  years  before,  calHng  attention  to  the  fact 
that  they  should  come  in  again.  This  pays  better  for  the 
money  invested  than  any  form  of  advertising  he  can  do, 
and  he  will  get  a  larger  percentage  of  replies  to  it  than 
any  other  form  of  advertising.  At  the  close  of  this 
chapter  is  a  general  form  I  use,  but,  of  course,  I  vary  it 
in  the  case  of  people  I  know  personally. 

Next  in  importance  in  the  advertising  game  is  per- 
sistency. The  results  of  advertising  are  accumulative. 
Advertising  done  a  year  ago  may  bring  its  results  today 
and  the  only  successful  advertiser  is  the  man  who  hangs 
on  to  it  like  a  bull  pup  worrying  a  root.  All  too  many 
optometrists  try  this,  that  or  the  other  form  of  adver- 
tising for  a  few  weeks  or  months  and  then  abandon  it 
before  the  results  begin  to  show. 

When  you  were  a  boy  did  they  have  one  of  those  old 
fashioned  wooden  pumps  at  your  house?  You  will 
remember  that  you  had  to  pour  about  a  quart  of  priming 
water  into  it  to  get  it  started.  Well,  advertising  is  like 
that.  The  money  you  pay  for  the  advertising  is  the  prim- 
ing water,  and  if  in  the  days  when  you  worked  the  old 
pump  you  had  poured  in  your  priming  water  and  worked 
a  few  minutes  and  then  quit,  you  would  have  even  lost 
your  priming  water;  but  if  you  had  kept  plugging  away 
you  not  only  got  your  priming  water  back,  but  a  lot  of 
the  cool  water  from  the  depths  of  the  well  with  it.  You've 


ADVERTISING  61 

got  to  keep  hammering  away  at  advertising  if  you  hope 
to  get  your  money  back. 

Finally,  keep  your  records  of  results.  Put  down  on 
each  examination  where  the  patient  comes  from  and  at 
the  end  of  each  month  tabulate  the  results  so  you  will 
know  where  you  get  your  business.  Put  down  your 
clubs,  your  lodge,  your  church  and  all  the  various  forms 
of  printed  advertising  you  do,  and  classify  every  patient 
so  you  can  eliminate  the  guess  work  and  know  where  you 
are  getting  your  business,  for  there  is  no  use  hoeing  in 
stony  ground  when  there  is  a  fertile  field  next  door  just 
waiting  to  burst  into  a  golden  harvest  of  dollars  if  you 
will  woi'k  it. 

Below  is  the  two-year  form  letter,  which  may  be  of 
interest : 

"Just  two  years  ago  today  (firm  name)  examined 
your  eyes  and  made  glasses  for  you.  Time  dies, 
doesn't  it? 

"Once  in  two  years  isn't  often,  but  it  is  rarely  that 
a  pair  of  glasses  have  to  be  changed  oftener.  It  is  also 
rarely  that  a  pair  can  be  worn  longer  than  that  without 
eyestrain. 

"A  change  in  yours  may  be  needed  now,  and  you 
had  better  come  in  and  let  him  examine  your  eyes. 

"You  of  course  know  that  he  makes  no  charge  for 
this  examination,  and  it  would  be  wise  to  take  advantage 
of  it. 

' '  Often  when  the  glasses  do  not  need  changing  they 
get  twisted  out  of  alignment  and  need  readjusting.  This, 
also,  is  on  his  free  list,  and  it  is  a  pleasure  for  him  to 
do  it,  and  it  will  add  to  your  eye  comfort. 


62  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

"Should  your  lenses  need  changing,  you  will  find 
his  prices  low  and  the  service,  you  know,  is  good.  You've 
had  it. 

"May  he  hope  to  see  you  in  a  few  days? 

"Remember,  its  (address)." 


CHAPTER  VIII 


SALESMANSHIP. 

The  proprietor  of  a  big  piano  house  had  sent  one  of 
his  salesmen  out  into  the  countiy  to  see  a  prospective 
customer.  He  was  at  lunch  when  the  salesman  returned 
and  walked  up  to  his  table.  The  first  thing  he  asked 
was,  "Did  you  get  the  money?"  The  salesman  began 
with,  "Well,  when  I  got  out  there  there  was  a  family 
of  three  people  and "  Here  the  proprietor  inter- 
rupted him  with,  "Did  you  get  the  money?"     "No," 

said  the  salesman,  "but  I "     Again  the  proprietor 

interrupted  him  with,  "Never  mind  why.  I  was  only 
interested  in  knowing  whether  you  got  the  money. ' ' 

That's  all  there  is  to  the  salesman  proposition — just 
getting  the  money.  Optical  conventions  may  rail  at  the 
medical  profession;  they  may  delve  deep  into  the  scien- 
tific end  of  the  business;  they  may  discuss  ethics  and 
usages  till  they  are  blue  in  the  face,  but  the  man  who 
gets  the  money  is  the  man  who  is  the  best  optometrist ! 

There  are  those  who  would  insist  that  the  word 
"honesty"  be  used  in  the  above  paragraph,  but  it  is  not 
needed  for  no  man  can  win  in  any  business  game  unless 
he  is  absolutely  honest.  The  theory  of  "let  the  buyer 
beware "  is  as  dead  as  the  language  in  which  the  lawyers 


64  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

couch  the  term.  The  man  who  attempts  to  vary  one  hair 
from  absolute  and  scrupulous  honesty  in  all  his  business 
transactions  is  as  sure  to  lose  as  a  man  who  persists  in 
drawing  to  inside  straights! 

The  question  of  how  to  increase  the  sales  efficiency 
in  one's  employes  and  in  one's  own  refracting  work, 
however,  is  one  of  the  biggest  problems  in  the  optical 
profession.  There  are  plenty  of  men  who  are  good 
refractionists  but  few  who  are  good  salesmen,  and  it  is 
infinitely  easier  to  teach  refraction  to  a  salesman  than 
it  is  to  teach  salesmanship  to  a  refractionist. 

At  the  outset  let  it  be  said  that  there  is  no  incentive 
for  great  exertion  in  any  walk  of  business  or  sport  with- 
out some  sort  of  a  contest.  The  home  physical  culture 
stunt  has  proven  almost  an  absolute  failure  for  this  rea- 
son. There  is  no  doubt  but  what  a  half  hour's  physical 
exercise  in  the  morning  in  one's  own  home  is  as  good  as 
an  hour  spent  on  a  golf  course,  but  the  trouble  lies  in  the 
fact  that  no  man  will  go  through  a  stated  set  of  motions 
all  alone  with  no  particular  object  in  view;  yet  that  same 
man  will  run  a  race,  box  a  round,  jump  a  few  hoops,  or 
play  golf  for  an  hour  if  he  only  has  some  man  to  race, 
box,  jump  or  play  against  him. 

The  inclination  to  strive  for  supremacy  in  anything 
is  inherent  in  every  man. 

The  great  object,  then,  for  the  proprietor  of  any 
optical  store  is  to  rouse  his  employes  to  some  sort  of  a 
contest  in  salesmanship. 

What  has  been  said  of  these  games  and  sports  is 
still  more  true  of  them  when  a  cup,  medal  or  cash  prize 


SALESMANSHIP  65 

is  hung  up.  Men  will  contest  for  a  time  just  for  the  love 
of  it,  but  if  interest  is  to  be  maintained  there  must  be 
a  prize  to  strive  for.  Here,  then,  we  face  the  proposition 
that  if  we  expect  high  class  salesmanship  we  must  incite 
a  contest,  and  to  retain  the  interest  in  that  contest  we 
must  hang  up  a  prize. 

The  solution  of  the  matter,  without  a  doubt,  is  not 
to  judge  men  by  the  amount  of  their  cash  sales  in  the 
store.  The  reason  this  is  unjust  is  because  one  man  may 
happen  on  two  prism  binocular  sales  in  one  day  and  wait 
on  only  two  people,  while  the  clerk  beside  him  might 
wait  on  fifty  people  and  yet  not  sell  as  much  in  gross 
cash  as  the  lucky  man  who  picked  up  the  two  binocular 
sales.  This  will  not  answer  because  luck  must  be  elim- 
inated. 

The  true  test  of  a  man's  ability  as  a  salesman  must 
rest  at  the  test  case.  The  prices  he  gets  for  the  stuff  he 
sells  is  the  true  test  of  his  ability  as  a  salesman. 

Do  not  understand  that  any  optical  establishment 
should  not  have  its  prices  fixed  as  inexorably  as  the  laws 
of  the  Medes  and  Persians,  for  it  should.  One  price  to 
all  has  been  so  clearly  demonstrated  to  be  the  only 
proper  system  that  it  needs  no  comment  here. 

When  a  man  increases  the  prices  he  gets  for  his 
work  in  a  house  where  the  charges  are  fixed,  it  simply 
means  that  he  must  sell  a  better  quality  of  stuff.  Where 
he  once  sold  cement  bifocals  he  must  sell  Kryptoks. 
Where  he  once  sold  flat  he  must  sell  toric  lenses,  and 
where  he  once  sold  aluminum  or  gold  filled  frames,  he 
must  sell  gold. 


fifi  THE    BUSINESS    SIDE    OF   OPTICS 

After  much  search  I  believe  the  best  system  is  this 
one  which  I  learned  from  one  of  the  most  successful 
retail  opticians  in  the  United  States. 

His  method  is  to  take  the  average  sale  per  man  who 
seats  himself  in  the  examination  chair.  Every  person 
who  sits  down  is  counted  against  the  man  making  the 
examination  and  every  dollar  he  gets  from  that  man  is 
credited  to  him.  If  he  examines  the  eyes  of  a  hundred 
men  in  a  month  and  he  gets  gross  sales  of  one  thousand 
dollars  his  average  for  that  month  is  ten  dollars  per 
man — and  allow  me  to  break  in  long  enough  to  say  that 
if  there  is  a  man  in  the  United  States  with  that  sort  of 
an  average,  I  have  a  position  for  him  with  a  salary  of 
$5,000  per  year  attached. 

Now  in  such  a  contest  there  is  only  one  item  which 
must  be  remembered,  and  that  is,  should  the  refraction- 
ist  find  the  services  of  an  oculist  needed  and  send  the 
patient  to  that  oculist  and  the  patient  come  back  later 
with  a  prescription  for  glasses,  the  price  of  that  pair  of 
prescription  glasses  should  be  entered  on  the  examina- 
tion book  and  go  to  the  credit  of  the  man  on  his  average. 

Let  these  results  be  tabulated  on  a  chart  like  that 
used  by  a  nurse  in  a  fever  case.  Let  a  chart  be  made 
for  each  month  in  the  year,  and  let  each  man  who  figures 
on  that  chart  as  an  examiner  have  his  line  ruled  on  it  in 
a  different  color  of  ink. 

I  know  of  one  instance  where  a  man's  average  was 
raised  from  $2.45  to  $5.25  in  less  than  a  year  through 
this  method.  I  know  where  a  refractionist  who,  working 
alone,  raised  his  own  average  by  $3.00  per  person  by 
simply  working  against  his  record.    He  hung  on  the  wall 


SALESMANSHIP  67 

immediately  back  of  his  examination  table  his  own  chart 
of  averages,  where  he  would  face  it  every  time  he  made 
an  examination,  and  constantly  worked  against  it  just 
as  sprinters  race  against  the  record  time  made  by  some 
other  fellow  in  bygone  days. 

The  question  of  the  prize  to  work  for  is  one  which 
must  be  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  head  of  every  estab- 
lishment to  decide  for  himself.  There  is  no  question  but 
what  the  proprietor  of  every  optical  store  in  the  country 
is  working  for  the  money  there  is  in  it,  and  he  should 
bear  constantly  in  mind  that  the  people  whom  he  em- 
ploys are  working  for  him  for  the  same  reason,  and  that 
the  best  prize  he  can  offer  for  high  efficiency  is  good  cold 
cash. 

Just  how  this  cash  should  be  distributed  is  difficult 
to  say.  But  it  should  come  in  some  way  so  that  a  man 
gets  pay  according  to  his  increase.  It  is  not  enough  that 
a  man  should  have  made  a  better  record  than  any  other 
man  in  the  store,  he  should  have  also  bettered  his  own 
record. 

If  this  spirit  of  contest  can  be  raised  in  a  friendly 
way  it  will  add,  at  a  minimum,  twenty-five  per  cent  to 
your  receipts.  You  would  pay  quite  a  lot  of  money  to 
any  man  who  would  contract  to  increase  your  business 
that  amount,  yet  few  men  are  willing  to  take  the  trouble 
to  work  out  such  a  plan  as  this  in  their  own  sales  force. 

The  great  advantage  of  this  plan  is  that  it  makes  a 
change  in  your  business  affairs  which  is  to  your  great 
advantage  outside  of  the  present  profit.  No  man  ever 
made  a  reputation  selling  cheap  goods.  No  man  ever 
bettered  his  standing  by  putting  out  low  priced  goods. 


68  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

It  is  a  fact  that  a  man  may  put  up  quite  a  yell  over  the 
price  of  a  pair  of  torics  in  a  heavy  gold  frame  at  the 
time  he  bought  them,  but  when  they  are  his  he  will  go 
out  in  the  world  and  boast  of  what  a  fine  pair  of  spec- 
tacles he  has;  whereas,  if  he  had  taken  advantage  of  a 
bargain  sale  some  place  and  bought  a  cheap  pair,  he 
would  never  have  boasted  of  them. 

Of  course  sales  efficiency  can  be  increased  in  every 
part  of  a  store.  The  most  important  part  is,  without 
doubt,  at  the  test  case,  but  the  store  proper  must  not  be 
neglected. 

Without  question  the  very  first  impression  created 
on  the  mind  of  an  entering  purchaser  is  the  most  last- 
ing. During  the  first  minute  you  are  in  a  store  you 
form  your  opinion  of  that  place.  If  the  opinion  you 
form  is  a  good  one,  you  are  an  easy  customer — you  are 
ready,  willing  and  anxious  to  be  pleased.  If  you  form 
a  poor  impression  of  the  store  or  its  clerks,  you  are 
stricken  with  a  grouch  before  you  are  in  the  place  a 
minute,  and  you  are  hard  to  please,  hard  to  sell,  and 
give  up  your  money  reluctantly. 

To  please  a  man  entering  a  store,  the  clerks  behind 
tlip  counter  must  be  on  the  job  instantly.  They  should 
jump  to  wait  on  the  customer,  no  matter  what  they  are 
doing,  and  come  with  a  smile.  It  has  not  been  a  month 
since  a  man  came  into  my  store  and  one  of  my  sales 
people  went  forward  briskly  with  a  smile  and  a  "Good 
morning."  The  man  reached  out  his  hand  sadly  and 
said:  "Young  man,  I  would  like  to  shake  hands  with 
you.  I  have  been  in  this  city  for  almost  two  weeks,  and 
you  are  the  first  person  whom  I  have  met  that  seemed  at 
all  glad  to  see  me!"    They  both  laughed  and  the  sale 


SALESMANSHIP  69 

was  already  made.  All  that  was  needed  was  to  hand  out 
the  goods  for  the  customer  was  in  a  buying  humor. 

The  average  man  behind  the  counter  seems  to  be 
of  the  opinion  that  nothing  on  this  earth  is  contagious 
except  measles  and  mumps.  The  truth  is  that  there  is 
nothing  on  earth  so  contagious  as  manner.  The  smiling, 
brisk  salesman  never  has  any  save  smiling  and  brisk 
customers.  The  people  you  face  over  the  show  case  are 
just  like  the  man  you  face  in  the  mirror.  If  you  smile, 
they  smile  back  at  you,  and  if  you  give  them  sour  looks 
and  frowns  they  will  return  them  in  kind. 

A  few  weeks  ago  I  noticed  that  one  of  my  salesmen 
was  selling  seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  thermometers 
and  barometers  sold  in  the  store,  and  I  am  as  curious 
and  as  snoopy  as  a  fox  terrier.  I  decided  to  watch  him 
and  see  how  he  did  it.  It  did  not  take  me  three  days 
to  get  it. 

There  is  no  subject  under  heaven  that  people  talk 
as  much  about  as  the  weather,  and  he  was  simply  taking 
advantage  of  it.  If  a  man  said  it  looked  like  rain  or 
looked  like  clearing  up,  little  "Bright  Eyes"  was  on  the 
job  in  a  minute.  He  would  tell  the  man  that  he  noticed 
this  morning  that  the  barometer  was  falling  and  the  wind 
rising,  and  that  this  indicated  hail  or  some  such  thing 
as  that,  for  he  was  really  weather-wise  and  inside  of  two 
minutes  he  would  have  that  man  looking  at  a  bunch  of 
aneroids  and  letting  him  explain  how  they  worked.  If 
it  was  a  question  of  temperature,  he  would  produce  a 
bunch  of  thermometers,  and  if  it  was  humidity  he  would 
send  the  man  home  with  a  hygrometer  in  his  hand  before 
he  knew  it. 


70  THE    BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

This  is  forcing  business.  It  is  a  fact  that  one-half 
our  wants  are  artificial  ones.  It  is  also  a  fact  that  the 
general  run  of  optical  salesmen  are  too  prone  to  stand 
back  on  their  professional  dignity  and  not  try  to  be 
merchants.  The  sale  of  such  things  as  telescopes,  field 
glasses,  magnifiers,  chains,  hooks,  automatics  and  meter- 
ological  instruments  could  be  increased  fifty  per  cent  all 
over  the  United  States  if  the  optical  salesmen  in  the 
various  stores  would  simply  use  some  of  the  ability  which 
lies  undeveloped  in  them. 

Another  instance  will  serve  as  an  illustration.  An 
optometrist  who  had  always  had  an  office  practice  bought 
out  another  on  the  ground  floor.  Among  other  things  he 
inherited  a  lot  of  good  tin  case  thermometers.  He  looked 
at  them  on  his  wall  for  two  years,  and  then  put  them  in 
the  window  and  marked  them  ten  cents  each.  One  of 
his  competitors  came  in  and  guyed  him  for  selling  them 
so  cheap  and  finally  bought  the  lot  at  the  price.  They 
were  intended  to  sell  for  $1.25,  and  the  new  owner  put 
them  in  his  window  as  shop  worn  standard  thermometers 
marked  down  from  $1.25  to  65  cents  and  sold  the  entire 
lot  at  that  price  in  a  week.  He  could  show  the  customer 
the  test  nicks  on  the  tube,  he  could  tell  them  the  differ- 
ence between  a  standard  and  an  ordinary  thermometer, 
and  besides  he  was  a  salesman  where  the  other  man  was 
not. 

Turn  your  attention  to  the  sales  methods  of  the 
department  store.  Put  your  goods  under  people's  noses; 
take  advantage  of  the  conversation  to  show  people  goods ; 
turn  the  conversation  in  such  a  manner  that  it  will  give 
you  the  chance  to  show  stuff,  and  then  don't  hesitate  to 
show  it. 


SALESMANSHIP  71 

Above  all,  get  busy  with  the  system  of  keeping  track 
of  the  average  per  man  in  your  examination  room,  and 
you  will  have  given  your  business  the  greatest  boost  in 
years ! 


CHAPTER  IX 


PERSONALITY. 

A  story  is  told  of  a  farm  liand  who  watched  a  sum- 
mer boarder  come  out  on  the  back  porch  one  morning 
before  breakfast.  The  city  man  polished  his  shoes,  he 
shaved  himself,  he  washed  his  face  and  hands  carefully, 
he  manicured  his  nails,  he  brushed  his  clothes,  and  then 
put  on  fresh  collar  and  cuffs.  The  countryman  watched 
the  entire  process  with  infinite  interest  and  then  re- 
marked, "Good  gosh,  mister!  You  are  an  awful  lot  of 
trouble  to  yourself ! ' ' 

The  successful  optometrist  must  be  a  lot  of  troulale 
to  himself.  He  must  remember  a  fact  which  does  not 
seem  like  a  fact  because  it  can  not  be  explained,  but  a 
fact,  nevertheless,  that  two-thirds  of  the  customers  in  an 
optical  store  are  women;  that  the  other  one-third  are 
men  of  culture  and  refinement,  for  the  higher  educated 
a  family  is  the  more  glasses  are  worn.  To  be  brief,  his 
patrons  are  the  best  people  in  his  town.  To  deal  with 
these  people  he  must  dress  and  act  the  part.  He  must 
&eep  himself  and  his  clothes  perfectly  clean. 

Please  do  not  understand  that  I  mean  he  should  be 
extravagant  in  his  dress — I  mean  that  he  must  simply  be 
clean. 

Come  over  here  to  the  mirror  a  moment  and  I  will 
show  you  exactly  what  I  mean.  Let's  start  in  at  the  top. 
I  want  you  to  carefully  look  over  this  optometrist  you 


PERSONALITY  73 

are  facing  and  tell  me  honestly  if  he  looks  as  though  he 
were  the  most  skillful  and  most  scientific  man  in  the 
city. 

Look  at  his  face.  How  long  has  it  been  since  he 
shaved?  Look  at  his  collar.  Is  it  frayed  at  the  edges? 
Is  it  perfectly  clean?  Is  it  the  sort  of  collar  the  best 
optometrist  in  town  would  wear?  Look  at  the  tie.  When 
he  smiles  look  at  his  teeth  and  see  if  they  are  clean. 
When  he  raises  his  hands  look  at  the  edges  of  Ms  cuffs. 
Are  they  white,  or  has  he  got  a  band  of  mourning  around 
them? 

Look  at  his  hands  and  his  nails.  Are  they  clean? 
Eemember  he  is  going  to  shove  those  hands  into  the  face 
of  a  lady  in  a  moment.  Are  they  the  sort  of  hands  you 
would  like  hovering  aroimd  your  own  face? 

How  about  the  dandruff  on  that  coat  collar?  How 
long  has  it  been  since  that  coat  was  pressed?  How  about 
the  trousers?  Are  they  creased  down  the  front,  or  are 
they  so  baggy  at  the  knees  that  they  look  like  he  were 
squatted  just  ready  to  jump? 

Trifles,  you  say?  Of  course  they  are  trifles!  But 
they  are  the  sort  of  trifles  which  attract  well-bred  people 
to  you,  if  they  are  looked  after,  and  they  are  the  sort  of 
trifles  which  drive  people  to  another  store  if  they  are 
neglected !  They  are  the  sort  of  trifles  which  might  just 
tip  the  scale  of  business  from  failure  to  success  and  the 
sort  of  trifles  which  cost  a  man  nothing  and  may  pay 
immense  profits  on  the  time  it  takes  to  do  them.  I 
once  worked  in  an  optical  store,  many  years  ago,  in 
which  swung  this  sign,  and  it's  a  good  one:  "If  you 
have  nothing  else  to  do,  go  wash  your  hands." 


74  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

How  about  your  speech?  Do  you  say  "I  have  saw" 
or  "I  seen?"  Do  you  say  "Ain't"  and  "Take  it  from 
me"  when  you  are  conversing  with  your  customers?  Do 
you  know  that  to  well-bred  and  well-educated  people 
these  things  are  as  much  discords  as  a  bad  note  is  to  a 
trained  musician  and  that  they  hurt  and  jar  the  sensi- 
bilities of  such  people  just  as  much? 

Do  you  know  that  the  optometrist  who  poses  as  an 
educated  man  is  giving  himself  the  lie  by  the  use  of  such 
examples  of  bad  grammar  and  slang?  Do  you  think 
people  will  believe  you  are  any  better  educated  in  your 
own  profession  than  you  are  in  the  language  of  the 
tongue  you  speak?  Not  likely!  Use  as  clean  English 
and  keep  as  clean  a  person  as  you  possibly  can  if  you 
hope  to  do  business  with  the  better  class  of  people  who 
do  the  same  thing. 

I  missed  my  breakfast  one  morning,  and  in  conse- 
quence I  went  early  to  lunch,  and  as  I  arrived  at  eleven 
I  saw  something  new  to  me.  I  saw  every  waiter  in  a  big 
hotel  lined  up  in  a  long  row  across  the  dining-room 
while  the  head  waiter  walked  along  and  inspected  each 
man.  He  looked  at  his  face,  his  tie  and  collar,  and  his 
shoes ;  he  walked  the  length  of  the  line,  and  then  on  the 
return  trip  he  made  every  man  extend  his  hands  and 
turn  them  before  his  eyes  to  show  that  they  were  clean 
and  that  his  nails  were  manicured. 

If  the  big  hotels  are  as  careful  of  their  servants  as 
all  this,  they  must  know  that  a  failure  along  this  line  will 
offend,  and  if  it  would  offend  in  a  servant  how  much 
more  would  it  be  likely  to  offend  in  a  professional  man 
who  is  supposed  to  be  educated,  refined  and  above  things 
of  this  sort? 


PERSONALITY  75 

Right  along  this  line  comes  the  matter  of  "Are 
there  any  ladies  present?"  stories.  There  is  no  worse 
habit  on  earth  for  an  optometrist  to  get  into  than  that 
of  telling  barroom  stories  in  his  own  store.  Of  course  I 
know  that  neither  you  or  any  other  man  will  tell  such 
stories  when  there  are  ladies  in  the  store,  but  do  you 
suppose  for  a  single  instant  that  there  is  a  woman  in  the 
world  so  stupid  who,  when  she  comes  into  your  store, 
and  sees  two  or  more  men  in  a  group  stop  talking  the 
moment  she  enters,  does  not  know  that  the  topic  of  con- 
versation was  not  fit  for  her  ears? 

Do  you  think  there  is  a  man  on  earth  so  common 
that  he  will  not  have  more  respect  for  you  if  you  do  not 
tell  such  stuff  I  No  matter  how  much  he  may  enjoy  tell- 
ing them,  he  will  not  think  less  of  you  if  you  do  not !  Of 
course,  when  men  tell  you  such  stories  in  the  store  you 
must  listen — you  need  not  draw  yourself  up  and  say 
"How  dare  you,  sir?"  or  anything  like  that.  Simply 
laugh  or  smile,  as  the  occasion  may  require,  but  cut  out 
all  the  "That  reminds  me"  stuff.  It  doesn't  pay,  and 
whenever  you  allow  your  store  to  become  a  clearing 
house  for  that  sort  of  conversation  you  make  it  a  loafing 
place  and  the  better  class  of  people  will  not  come  into  it. 

It's  bad  business  to  allow  men  who  are  not  busy  to 
congregate  in  your  store,  anyway.  Simply  do  not  en- 
courage them.  If  they  come,  excuse  yourself  on  the 
ground  of  work  and  leave  them.  People,  particularly 
women,  do  not  like  to  have  others  around  listening  to 
their  conversation,  and,  more  than  that,  if  you  are  chat- 
ting with  friends  and  have  to  leave  them  to  wait  on  a 
customer,  you  are  liable  to  give  the  customer  scant  atten- 


76  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

tion  in  your  desire  to  get  back  and  resume  your  conver- 
sation. 

Keep  your  person,  your  linen,  your  conversation  and 
your  store  as  clean  as  a  pin,  not  only  because  it  is  the 
proper  thing  to  do  from  a  standpoint  of  your  personal 
pride,  but  because  it  pays. 

Then  there  is  the  booze  habit!  Cut  it  out,  and  cut 
it  out  quick!  The  man  who  has  the  mingled  odor  of 
cloves  and  rye  on  his  breath  during  business  hours  is  a 
fool,  net!  Remember,  I  am  not  touching  this  question 
from  a  moral  standpoint.  That  has  been  done — done  to 
a  frazzle !  I  am  speaking  as  a  business  man  and  from  a 
business  standpoint. 

Go  out  at  night  and  soak  your  soul  to  saturation  witJi 
the  essence  of  don't  give-a-damativeness  if  you  must — 
it's  your  own  funeral — but  if  you  value  your  business 
existence  don't  touch  it  during  business  hours! 

The  question  of  whether  it  was  just  one  cocktail 
before  breakfast,  or  just  one  stein  with  your  lunch,  has 
no  bearing  on  the  case  at  all.  The  real  point  is  that  you 
have  the  odor  of  drink  on  your  breath  and  there  are  a 
large  proportion  of  people  with  whom  you  do  business 
that  are  prejiidiced  against  it  and  it  will  cost  you  money. 
These  people  cannot  distinguish  between  a  drink  and  a 
drunk,  and  are  liable  to  believe  you  the  latter. 

Drinking  during  business  hours  is  a  habit,  and  it  is 
a  habit  which  leads  on  down  a  road  peopled  with  men 
whose  trousers  are  fringed  at  the  bottom;  whose  noses 
are  magenta  colored;  whose  eyes  are  weak  and  watery; 
whose  nerve  is  gone  and  whose  hands  are  palsied,  rheu- 
matic and  joint-swollen,  and  such  men  are  without  honor 


PERSONALITY  77 

in  the  banks  and  leading  jobbing  houses  of  the  optical 
profession. 

Habit  is  the  strongest  factor  in  human  life.  Every 
new  habit  is  a  new  master.  Let  that  habit  be  a  habit  of 
frugality  and  next  year  you  will  be  more  frugal ;  let  that 
habit  be  a  cocktail  and  next  year  you  will  take  two;  or 
if  you  start  kissing  your  wife  in  the  morning  before  you 
start  to  work,  next  year  you  will  kiss  her  twice ! 

Without  a  positive  effort  to  cultivate  good  habits 
any  man  will  drop  naturally  into  bad  ones.  It  is  natural 
to  do  wrong.  Good  habits  must  be  cultivated  and  nur- 
tured like  orchids,  while  bad  habits,  like  tough  and  nox- 
ious weeds  in  a  garden,  will  grow  without  cultivation  or 
rather  through  lack  of  it. 

Allow  the  habit  of  drinking  during  business  hours 
to  grow  on  you,  and  it  is  only  a  question  of  time  until  it 
will  cost  you  many  influential  friends  and  many  patrons. 
You  may  be  a  moral  man  as  men  go,  you  may  not  drink 
enough  to  injure  your  health,  but  if  you  drink  at  all  dur- 
ing business  hours  you  will  injure  your  business. 

It  is  an  odd  fact  that  the  most  intemperate  people 
in  the  world  are  the  so-called  "temperance  people."  It 
is  their  honest  belief  that  any  man  who  will  take  a  drink 
will  rob  a  hen  roost  and  then  come  back  after  the  pole 
on  which  the  hen  sat.  Such  being  their  prejudi-ce  they 
will  patronize  the  poorest  optometrist  in  the  city  rather 
than  spend  a  dollar  on  a  man  who  takes  a  highball.  Cut 
it  out  or  it  will  cost  you  money. 

Once  more  let  me  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  this 
is  written  as  a  business  document  and  not  a  moral  thesis. 

It's  queer,  though,  how  little  attention  the  average 
man  pays  to  good  advice.     He  will  take  five  men  with 


78  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

him  to  help  him  select  a  five-dollar  bull  pup  from  a  litter, 
but  will  refuse  advice  in  the  selection  of  a  wife  or  in  the 
regulation  of  his  personal  habits. 

But  take  it  from  me  that  a  man  cannot  conduct  a 
business  while  he  is  full  of  fusel  oil,  or  make  a  living  as 
long  as  he  scents  his  breath  with  cardamon  seeds. 


CHAPTER  X 


RECORDS. 

There  are  more  ways  to  keep  prescriptions  and 
examination  records  than  there  are  to  abuse  lettuce  in  a 
salad  course  at  dinner. 

The  little  details  are  a  matter  for  each  optometrist 
to  decide  for  himself,  but  there  are  two  great  principles 
involved  which  should  be  watched  with  care. 

Earlier  in  this  book  I  have  called  attention  to  the 
"two-year  letter"  which  pays  so  well.  In  order  to  be 
able  to  send  these  there  must  be  some  sort  of  a  daily 
record  of  examinations  which  can  be  foimd  by  the  date. 

This  of  course  entails  the  old-fashioned  index, 
which  takes  time  and  often  a  search  through  half  a 
dozen  books  before  one  can  locate  an  examination,  while 
the  ordinary  card  index  system  will  not  enable  an  optom- 
etrist to  lay  his  hands  on  the  work  he  did  two  years  ago 
today. 

To  my  mind  both  of  these  things  are  necessary  in 
every  well-conducted  optical  establishment,  so  I  solve 
the  riddle  by  using  both  systems. 

When  a  patient  comes  to  my  place  for  an  examina- 
tion, I  take  his  name  and  address,  which  I  write  in  an 
ordinary  blank  book,  or  what  is  known  as  the  "Record" 
style.  On  this  record  I  make  all  the  notes  of  the  case 
I  care  about,  as  well  as  the  result  of  the  refracting  and 
also  the  origin  of  the  case — I  mean  by  that,  where  the 


80  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

case  came  from.  I  have  a  set  of  symbols  and  opposite 
every  name  on  my  examination  book  you  will  find 
"Ad.  S.,"  "F.  P.,"  "C.  A.,"  meaning,  "Advertisement 
in  the  Star,"  "Former  patient,"  or  "Club  acquaint- 
ance," as  the  case  may  be.  All  these  are  tabulated 
monthly  and  kept  in  a  small  memorandum  book  for  my 
own  information. 

Of  course  each  sheet  in  this  book  is  dated  so  when 
I  come  to  my  shop  in  the  morning  I  can  turn  readily  to 
the  work  of  that  same  day  two  years  before  and  get 
out  my  two-year  letters  on  the  first  mail. 

With  each  of  these  record  books  is  an  index  and  if 
every  card  in  my  card  index  were  lost  or  destroyed  I 
would  have  a  complete  if  not  a  convenient  record  of  all 
my  examinations,  which  are  put  in  a  fire-proof  safe 
every  night. 

On  several  occasions  I  have  had  cards  lost  or  mis- 
placed in  an  index  and  this  old-fashioned  method  of  rec- 
ord has  never  failed  me  since  I  have  been  in  business. 

From  these  books  every  morning  I  make  out  card 
records  for  my  card  index  which,  as  I  have  before 
explained,  is  placed  beside  my  case  for  repair  work 
immediately  inside  the  door,  where  it  is  easy  of  access 
when  a  person  comes  iu  with  a  pair  of  broken  glasses  to 
be  repaired.  Nothing  so  displeases  a  customer  as  to  be 
compelled  to  wait  while  a  prescription  is  being  looked  up. 

I  have  these  cards  printed  on  two  colors  of  paper, 
one  white  and  the  other  blue,  and  on  the  white  cards  I 
record  the  examinations  we  make  in  the  store  and  on 
the  blue  ones  we  record  the  prescriptions  we  get  from 
the  oculists,  the  only  difference  being  that  in  the  upper 
left  hand  corner  of  the  blank  which  is  left  for  the  name 


RECORDS  81 

of  the  doctor  who  wrote  the  prescription,  we  write  the 
number  of  the  book  and  the  number  of  the  page  in  our 
own  record  books. 

I  have  seen  a  hundred  forms  of  card  index  for 
opticians,  each  of  which  had  some  good  points  and  some 
bad  ones.  I  have  read  them  all,  from  a  card  with  nothing 
but  a  space  for  the  name  of  the  patient  and  all  the  rest 
blank,  to  those  which  had  a  space  for  a  memo  every 
time  the  glasses  were  repaired,  and  as  a  result  have 
decided  that  each  man  should  originate  his  own  form  and 
originate  it  for  the  same  reason  that  I  originated  the  one 
I  use — because  it  has  blanks  for  the  information  which  I 
want  to  keep.  There  may  be  things  on  it  you  would  not 
care  about  just  as  there  may  be  things  you  would  like  to 
keep  that  I  have  not  put  down. 

Both  sides  of  the  card  I  use  are  printed  on  stiff  bond 
paper — not  on  bristol  board,  as  I  once  had  them,  as  that 
fills  up  a  drawer  too  quickly  and  if  you  use  it  you  will  find 
in  a  very  few  years  your  cabinet  drawers  will  be  filled 
with  records. 

In  addition  to  my  regular  index  I  have  a  dead  box 
for  cards  which  are  over  six  years  old  as  I  find  it  very 
unusual  to  have  occasion  to  refer  to  a  card  further  back 
than  that.  On  the  first  of  January  every  year  I  go 
through  the  index  and  remove  to  this  dead  box  all  cards 
which  are  over  six  years  old,  and  this  keeps  my  index 
from  getting  filled  up  with  useless  cards. 

I  keep  another  file  which  is  very  important  to  me 
also,  and  that  is  a  file  of  my  daily  cash  sales.  I  had  a 
small  book  made  with  thirty-one  lines  to  a  page  and 
down  a  column  to  the  extreme  left  I  have  printed  the 
numerals  to  31  representing  the  days  of  the  month. 


82  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

The  rest  of  the  page  I  have  ruled  into  five  vertical 
columns  headed  "Gold,"  "Steel,"  "Jobs"  and  "Miscel- 
laneous," leaving  another  column  for  totals. 

Each  day's  business  I  divide  into  these  various 
heads  and  set  the  results  down  in  the  book,  adding  them 
up  at  the  end  of  each  week  and  setting  down  the  month's 
total  at  the  bottom  and  the  average  per  day  beside  it. 

Have  you  ever  figured  how  much  difference  there 
is  in  your  profit  between  your  repairs  and  your  new 
sales?  Have  you  ever  considered  how  much  difference 
there  is  between  your  profits  on  new  work  in  gold  and 
in  steel  frames?  Have  you  ever  noted  how  much  dif- 
ference in  profit  there  is  between  the  sale  of  general 
optical  merchandise  and  spectacles?  Do  you  know  how 
much  of  your  gross  sales  come  from  one  source  and 
how  much  comes  from  the  other!  Do  you  know  that 
your  repair  work  is  better  than  it  was  last  year  or  do 
you  just  think  so?  Do  you  know  whether  that  increase 
in  business  in  May  was  from  new  glasses  sold  or 
whether  you  sold  some  filled  glasses  and  things  which 
boosted  the  sales  for  the  month?  Listen  to  me,  my 
friend,  if  you  don't  know  and  are  simply  guessing,  it 
behooves  you  to  get  busy  and  find  out ! 

No  man  in  this  or  any  other  business  can  afford  to 
leave  things  to  chance !  A  hundred  little  leaks  are  more 
liable  to  sink  a  ship  than  one  big  one  for  the  one  big 
one  creates  excitement  and  a  hurry  up  call  is  issued 
for  all  hands  to  come  and  save  it  while  the  one  hundred 
little  ones  let  in  just  as  much  water,  create  much  less 
excitement  and  are  harder  to  stop  because  they  ai-e  scat- 
tered. 


RECORDS  83 

Year  by  year  I  have  made  my  records  more  and 
more  exhaustive  and  year  by  year  I  have  found  and 
corrected  little  leaks  which  were  sapping  my  profits  and 
have  stopped  them.  Just  one  example.  I  noticed  that 
we  were  selling  a  lot  of  steel  and  aluminum  glasses.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  something  might  be  done  to  correct 
this  and  put  gold  glasses  on  these  people.  A  council  of 
war  was  held  and  after  experimenting  we  found  the 
best  plan  to  be  that  whereby  we  showed  only  two  frames 
at  the  start,  gold  and  steel.  We  centered  all  our  ability 
on  selling  the  gold  frame,  pressing  the  point  of  looks 
and  durability  to  the  limit,  and  when  we  found  the 
patient  could  not  pay  for  gold  we  played  the  trump  card 
and  showed  the  gold  filled  and  generally  sold  that 
instead  of  the  steel. 

We  found  that  where  the  three  frames  were  shown 
at  the  same  time  we  sold  fewer  gold  frames,  as  the  filled 
ones  cut  into  the  gold  sales,  but  where  we  showed  only 
the  two  and  kept  back  the  gold  filled  as  a  joker  we  could 
almost  eliminate  the  sale  of  steel  frames  entirely.  As 
I  write  I  reach  over  on  my  desk  and  pick  up  the  little 
book,  of  which  I  have  just  spoken,  and  find  the  steel 
sales  so  few  that  the  column  marked  "Steel"  is  well 
nigh  empty  and  will  remain  so  as  long  as  I  keep  the 
careful  records  that  I  now  keep. 

No  matter  what  the  matter  is  which  relates  to  your 
business,  put  it  down  in  black  and  white  and  tabulate 
and  analyze  it !  It  can  never  harm  you  and  will  at  times 
make  you  some  startling  revelations. 

I  keep  an  account  with  every  oculist  in  my  home 
city.  I  put  down  under  his  name  not  only  a  record  of 
the  prescriptions  I  get  from  him  every  month,  but  also 


84  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

the  amount  of  money  I  got  for  filling  those  prescrip- 
tions, and  I  have  found  in  more  than  one  case  that  the 
financial  standing  of  the  patients  of  one  man  makes 
them  better  customers  than  those  of  some  other  doctor 
who  sends  me  more  people.    They  buy  better  stuff. 

There  is  not  a  month  that  we  do  not  prevent  mis- 
understandings in  our  repair  department  because  we 
have  a  book  in  the  shop  which  shows  the  name,  kind  of 
glass,  sort  of  job  and  date  of  delivery  of  every  pair  of 
glasses  we  repair. 

Should  a  man  come  in  as  did  one  within  a  week 
claiming  that  he  paid  us  to  put  a  new  temple  on  his  spec- 
tacles and  that  we  soldered  it  instead,  all  we  need  do  is 
to  produce  our  job  book  which  showed  that  it  was  the 
right  temple  we  put  on  while  it  was  the  left  which  had 
been  soldered,  which  recalled  to  his  mind  that  he  had 
once  broken  it  out  of  the  city  and  had  it  soldered. 

The  more  records  you  keep  the  less  trouble  you 
have  and  the  more  you  know  about  your  business. 


CHAPTER  XI 


HOW  TO  FIGURE  PROFITS. 

This  is  a  queer  old  world,  anyway.  There  are  so 
many  things  which  we  think  we  Imow  that  we  do  not, 
and  so  many  things  which  we  know  that  we  don't  remem- 
ber we  know  till  some  fellow  comes  along  and  jogs  our 
memory  about  them.  It  hasn't  been  very  long  since  a 
young  optometrist  talked  to  me  in  confidence  and  this 
is  the  line  of  conversation. 

"  I  am  certainly  glad  that  I  stuck  to  it  till  I  finished 
business  high  school.  It  has  been  a  big  help  to  me  since 
I  have  been  in  the  business,  for,  while  I  find  plenty  of 
optometrists  who  are  well  posted  in  refraction,  I  find  few 
of  them  who  are  posted  in  business  systems.  Some  of 
them  that  I  have  met  have  a  lot  of  trouble  figuring  dis- 
counts and  profits  and  it  is  perfectly  easy  to  me." 

I  replied,  "I  once  had  a  fellow  in  my  employ  who 
didn't  know  how  to  mark  an  article  which  cost  $1.00  so 
as  to  make  100  per  cent  profit." 

"Well,  upon  my  word!"  exclaimed  the  youngster. 

"How  would  you  do  it!"  I  asked  him  casualty. 

"Why,  $2.00,  of  course!"  he  replied. 

"But,  I  insisted,  if  you  sell  an  article  for  $2.00,  which 
cost  you  $1.00  you  are  only  making  50  per  cent  because 
50  per  cent  of  the  amount  you  receive  is  profit." 

He  scratched  his  head,  looked  puzzled  for  a  moment 
and  flushing  up  he  confessed  that  he  could  not  do  the 


86  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

problem  to  liis  satisfaction  despite  that  boasted  high 
school  education. 

No  man  can  do  it !  The  only  way  you  can  mark  an 
article  to  make  100  per  cent  profit  is  to  have  some  fellow 
make  you  a  present  of  it!  Even  then  you  will  have  to 
sell  it  in  a  store  which  costs  you  no  rent  and  have  it  sold 
by  clerks  who  draw  no  salary. 

This  young  man  was  making  the  same  mistake  that 
thousands  of  optometrists  all  over  the  country  are  mak- 
ing. A  mistake  which  only  the  large  gross  profit  in  the 
business  enables  them  to  make  and  still  eat  three  times 
a  day  and  pay  rent.  You  figure  your  profit  on  your  buy- 
ing ijrice  instead  of  on  your  selling  price. 

It  is  my  honest  belief  that  there  is  not  one  optome- 
trist in  ten  who  can  mark  an  opera  glass  so  that  it  will 
pay  him  a  certain  percentage  of  profit ! 

Nine  of  them  out  of  ten  will  tell  you  that  if  you  buy 
a  magnifier  for  $1.00  and  sell  it  for  $1.25  you  have  made 
25  per  cent.  This  is  the  failure  to  take  into  considera- 
tion the  cost  of  doing  business  which  in  every  case  must 
be  added  when  marking  the  cost  of  goods.  The  second 
mistake  is  in  figuring  the  profit  to  be  made  on  the  cost 
price  when  it  must  be  figured  on  the  selling  pi'ice.  Please 
try  to  keep  these  two  points  in  mind. 

In  the  optical  business  as  in  all  others,  two  separate 
amounts  of  capital  are  required.  One  part  of  the  capital 
is  that  which  is  invested  in  merchandise,  the  other  is  that 
required  for  running  expenses,  selling  expenses  and,  in 
fact,  all  expenses  outside  of  those  not  properly  charge- 
able to  the  merchandise  account. 

Both  these  items  of  investment  must  pay  a  proper 
return  if  the  optometrist  is  going  to  eat  with  any  degree 


HOW    TO    FIGURE    PROFITS  87 

of  regularity.  It  is  obvious  that  dividends  on  all  the 
capital  invested  are  not  possible  unless  all  is  considered 
in  marking  the  selling  price. 

If  the  percentage  of  profit  is  reckoned  on  the  cost 
of  merchandise  only,  as  is  the  case  of  the  man  who  buys 
the  magnifier  for  $1.00  and  sells  it  for  $1.25  under  the 
impression  that  he  is  making  25  per  cent  profit,  no  pro- 
vision is  made  for  that  part  of  the  capital  which  is 
invested  in  running  expenses. 

Here  is  a  case  in  point.  A  local  optician  who  had  a 
photographic  department  had  to  have  a  delivery  wagon 
to  haul  heavy  plates  and  such  things  around  to  the 
photographers.  He  decided  to  sell  one  of  his  horses  and 
use  a  one-horse  wagon.  The  horse  had  cost  him  around 
$100.  He  thought  he  could  get  $150  for  him  and  he  said 
50  per  cent  profit  was  good  enough.  He  had  no  time  to 
attend  to  the  selling  of  his  horse  so  he  turned  the  job 
over  to  a  horse  dealer  to  look  after.  The  horseman 
agreed  to  make  the  sale  for  33  1-3  per  cent  commission. 
He  sold  the  horse  for  $150,  deducted  his  $50  commission 
and  handed  the  optometrist  his  $100!  So  he  came  out 
only  even!  See  the  point?  Here  was  a  clean  profit  of 
50  per  cent  eaten  up  exactly  by  a  commission  of  33  1-3 
per  cent!  How  did  it  happen?  The  optometrist  figured 
his  profit  on  the  cost  price  of  the  horse  but  the  horseman 
figured  his  on  the  selling  price ! 

This  optometrist  did  just  what  three-fourths  of  the 
optometrists  in  this  country  are  doing  today.  He  did  not 
know  how  to  mark  his  goods. 

You  may  think  this  estimate  an  exaggeration  but  I 
can  prove  it  to  you  by  actual  figures.  The  Burroughs 
Adding  Machine  Co.  printed  an  advertisement  on  the 


88  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

back  cover  of  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  which  contained 
this  problem:  "A  certain  article  costs  $1.00  wholesale. 
What  will  it  have  to  be  sold  for  to  allow  a  profit  of  10 
per  cent  after  deducting  22  per  cent  for  the  cost  of  doing 
business?"  They  otfered  a  valuable  book  to  anyone  who 
sent  in  an  answer  to  the  problem  regardless  of  whether 
the  answer  was  right  or  wrong.  Now  this  is  a  prob- 
lem which  every  optometrist  has  to  answer  every  time 
he  marks  up  an  invoice  of  goods.  Eemember  also  that 
this  paper  has  a  general  circulation  and  goes  to  every 
class  of  merchant  who  does  business  in  the  United  States. 

How  many  people  do  you  suppose  answered  that 
problem  correctly? 

Seven  hundred  and  fifty  out  of  every  one  thousand 
answers  were  wrong!  Three-quarters  of  the  merchants 
in  this  country  do  not  know  how  to  mark  their  goods 
to  get  a  certain  percentage  of  profit.  Do  you  believe 
that  optometrists  are  superior  in  their  business  knowl- 
edge to  the  average  run  of  merchants?  I  do  not.  On 
the  contrary,  I  believe  that  they  are  less  well  informed 
on  the  principles  of  business  systemizing  than  any  class 
of  men  with  whom  I  have  ever  come  in  contact. 

The  answers  to  this  problem  propounded  by  the  Bur- 
roughs people  ranged  all  the  way  from  $1.10  to  $1.60. 
The  majority  gave  the  selling  price  as  $1.32  or  $1.34, 
allowing  a  profit  of  one  cent  or  less  notwithstanding  that 
an  explanation  in  the  ad.  said  plainly  that  the  answer 
was  not  $1.32. 

If  the  wholesale  price  is  $1.00  and  the  cost  of  doing 
business  is  22  per  cent,  $1.34  does  not  allow  10  per  cent 
but  only  1  4-10  per  cent  profit.  On  a  gross  annual  busi- 
ness of  $15,000,  which  is  about  what  the  ordinary  small 


HOW    TO    FIGURE    PROFITS  89 

optometrist  does,  he  would  clear  $150  a  yeai-,  or  a  little 
more  than  $12  per  month,  and  yet  there  are  optometrists 
all  over  the  land  marking  goods  that  way  and  the  fool 
killer  still  procrastinates! 

The  optometrist  would  not  even  make  this  small 
profit  unless  he  had  himself  on  his  own  pay  roll  at  a 
regular  salary  and  my  experience  has  been  that  not  one 
in  fifty  has  himself  on  the  pay  roll.  If  they  are  not  on 
the  pay  roll  of  course  their  own  salary  would  not  be  in 
the  22  per  cent  cost  of  doing  business  and  they  would 
not  make  on  $15,000  gross  sales  as  much  as  they  could 
make  selling  War  Cry's  on  Saturday  and  beating  the 
tambourine  the  rest  of  the  week ! 

If  article  referred  to  were  sold  for  $1.32  the  mer- 
chant would  lose  almost  one  per  cent  instead  of  making 
ten  per  cent !  There  is  little  doubt  in  my  mind  that  there 
is  not  an  optical  establishment  in  this  country  today 
using  this  cost  marking  system  which  is  not  selling  some 
goods  for  less  than  cost  with  the  fatuous  idea  that  they 
are  getting  rich  at  it.  Do  you  dare  put  your  own  stock 
to  this  test? 

The  whole  trouble  is  in  adding  32  per  cent  of  the 
cost  price  to  the  cost  price  instead  of  adding  32  per  cent 
of  the  selling  price  to  the  cost  price. 

Now,  before  any  optician  can  properly  mark  his 
goods  he  must  know  exactly  what  it  costs  him  to  do  busi- 
ness. My  experience  has  been  that  in  small  establish- 
ments it  hovers  around  the  20  per  cent  mark  and  increases 
as  the  size  of  the  establishment  grows  larger.  I  have 
known  cases  where  it  run  almost  up  to  30  per  cent  but 
these  are  rare  and  needless. 


90  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

The  22  per  cent  used  by  the  Burroughs  people  is 
good  enough  to  continue  to  use  as  an  illustration  here. 

The  method  of  determining  the  cost  of  doing  busi- 
ness is  to  add  together  from  last  year's  business  every 
item  of  your  expense.  Put  in  every  cent  spent  except 
what  was  actually  spent  for  merchandise,  not  forgetting 
cases  and  advertising.  Take  this  sum  and  find  out  what 
per  cent  it  is  of  the  total  sales  of  that  year  and  you  will 
find  out  exactly  what  your  cost  of  doing  business  is.  This 
must  be  done  anew  every  year  as  changes  in  rent,  clerk 
hire,  delivery  expenses  and  alterations  in  advertising 
campaigns  will  make  variations  year  by  year. 

An  amazing  amount  of  money  is  lost  every  year 
through  forgetfulness.  You  must  keep  tab  on  all  your 
expenses  or  your  profit  figuring  will  be  as  full  of  holes 
as  a  colander.  Only  a  chump  will  trust  everything  to 
mere  memory. 

Having  once  determined  what  the  expense  of  doing 
business  is,  the  proper  method  of  figuring  the  cost  of 
the  goods  is  this— we  will  take  the  Burroughs  problem 
as  an  example. 

Per  cent  Per  cent 

Let  the  selling  price  equal 100 

Deduct  for  cost  of  doing  business 22 

Deduct  for  profit 10  32 

Cost  is  68^  of  selling  price 68 

Then  68  per  cent  is $1.00 

1  per  cent  is 0147 

100  per  cent  is  100  times  .0147  or  selling  price.  .  .$1.47 


HOW   TO    FIGURE    PROFITS  91 

This  is  the  solution  of  that  problem  and  the  pi'inci- 
ple  involved  is  the  solution  of  every  problem  of  marking 
goods  in  an  optical  store;  yet  all  the  way  from  Maine 
to  Texas  there  are  optometrists  who  are  buying  magni- 
fiers at  $1.00  and  selling  them  for  $1.25  with  the  wild 
idea  that  they  are  making  25  per  cent  profit  when  the 
chances  are  that  they  are  losing  money  or  just  about 
breaking  even  on  the  deal ! 

You  may  have  a  fine  education,  you  may  be  able  to 
take  a  problem  in  geometry  or  algebra  and  make  it  go 
dead,  jump  through  hoops  and  sit  up  and  beg  but  if  you 
want  to  fatten  your  batting  average  with  the  bank  you 
would  better  be  putting  in  a  little  time  on  the  simple 
arithmetic  of  business! 

There  are  some  things  they  do  not  teach  in  the  col- 
lege classes  in  higher  mathematics,  that  I  want  to  impress 
on  every  optometrist,  and  here  are  a  couple  of  them. 
Any  per  cent  of  a  smaller  sum  is  a  smaller  per  cent 
of  a  greater  sum.  Percentage  of  profit  must  be  added 
to  the  selling  price  and  not  to  the  cost  price  if  you  hope 
to  buy  new  socks  for  the  baby ! 

One  more  weak  spot  in  the  average  optical  estab- 
lishment, which  is  close  kin  to  the  cost  system,  should  be 
mentioned  and  then  this  chapter  will  be  done. 

You  are  a  pretty  pimk  optometrist  if  you  could  not 
go  out  and  earn  thirty  dollars  a  week  working  for  some 
other  fellow,  are  you  not?  That  is  $1,560  a  year.  How 
much  did  you  make  last  year  over  all  your  expenses? 
Less  than  that? 

It's  a  mighty  small  optical  store  which  has  in  it  less 
than  $2,000  worth  of  stock  and  fixtures,  isn't  it?  It  is. 
If  you  took  that  sum  aroimd  to  your  bank  cashier  he 


92  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

could  tell  you  some  bonds  to  buy  which  would  pay  you 
5  per  cent  net,  couldn't  he?  He  could.  Thank  you  again 
for  agreeing  with  me.  Now  the  interest  on  $2,000  at  5 
per  cent  is  just  about  $100  a  year,  isn't  it?  This  means 
that  if  you  are  in  business  for  yourself  and  you  are  not 
clearing  over  $1,660  per  annum  you  are  in  bad  and  had 
better  get  out  and  go  to  work  for  some  other  fellow.  The 
truth  is  that  the  mistake  generally  comes  from  the  fact 
that  the  optometrist  forgets  to  add  into  his  cost  of  doing 
business  a  salary  for  himself  equal  to  what  some  other 
man  would  pay  him  for  his  services  as  manager. 

If  he  hasn't  his  own  name  on  the  pay  roll  and  does 
not  pay  into  his  personal  account  a  sum  equal  to  5  per 
cent  on  the  money  he  has  invested  in  stock  and  fixtures 
then  he  is  joshing  himself  along  trying  to  fool  himself 
into  thinking  he  is  making  money  when  he  is  not. 

Get  on  your  own  pay  roll  and  draw  your  salary 
every  week.  Get  in  your  stock  and  fixtures  at  the  interest 
rate  for  the  sum  invested  and  then  see  liow  much  money 
you  are  making.    Be  honest  with  yourself. 


CHAPTER  XII 


SAVING. 

As  has  been  said  in  another  chapter  of  this  book, 
there  is  a  tendency  in  our  business  for  the  proprietor  to 
allow  his  profits  to  get  tied  up  in  stock.  A  man  will  open 
an  optical  business  and  worry  and  struggle  along  for 
ten  years,  denying  himself  and  family  many  things,  and 
year  by  year  see  his  business  increase  and  then  at  the 
end  of  the  ten  years  he  can  show  you  on  his  books,  maybe, 
that  he  has  made  say  $25,000 ;  yet  if  you  will  look  at  his 
bank  book  you  will  find  that  he  has  $346.78  in  cash!  He 
will  have  spent  $15,000  in  living  and  have  $7,000  tied  up 
in  stock  and  the  other  three  thousand  will  represent  what 
he  invested  in  the  Little  Wild  Cat  Dredging  and  Smelt- 
ing Co.  and  the  nice  green  shares  with  their  gilt  seals 
are  somewhere  in  his  safe  now — he  doesn't  remember 
where ! 

Such  is  life!  Full  of  gum  boils,  zylonite  spectacles 
and  solid  gold  spring  eye  glasses  sold  for  a  dollar!  It 
is  discouraging  for  a  man  to  look  at  that  $7,000  worth 
of  stock,  to  remember  the  times  he  wanted  to  go  fishing 
and  didn't,  and  recall  that  all  he  has  to  show  for  it  is  a 
bunch  of  fly-specked  telescopes  and  tarnished  opera 
glasses ! 

What's  the  answer"?  A  sinking  fund — a  savings  ac- 
count ! 


94  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

It's  not  a  question  of  how  mucli  you  are  making — 
it's  a  question  of  how  much  you  have!  It's  not  a  matter 
of  paper  profits — show  me  your  bank  book !  I  don't  care 
about  your  good  will,  your  valuable  file  of  prescriptions, 
your  future  prospects — let  me  have  a  peep  into  your  safe 
deposit  box!  I  can  tell  you  whether  you  are  making 
money  or  not  and  I  am  no  auditor  nor  expert  account- 
ant! If  you  are  making  it,  show  it  to  me!  I  want  to 
feel  it  in  my  hands !  If  you  cannot  do  that  you  cannot 
even  buy  a  beer  with  it ! 

The  trouble  lies  in  the  fact  that  too  few  optometrists 
develop  the  sinking  fund  habit.  This  business,  trade  or 
profession,  as  you  choose  to  call  it,  like  all  others,  has 
its  lean  as  well  as  its  fat  years,  and  the  remedy  for  the 
lean  ones  is  the  Sinking  Fund. 

There  are  different  phases  of  the  sinking  fund  for 
different  men  but  fundamentally  it  is  a  certain  sum  set 
aside  out  of  each  week's  business  and  placed  in  a  savings 
bank  or  building  association  as  an  emergency  fund. 

For  the  optometrist,  it  has  always  seemed  to  me 
that  it  should  represent  at  least  as  much  as  10  per  cent 
of  his  last  year's  profit.  Take  the  gross  profit  of  last 
year  and  divide  this  sum  into  fifty-two  parts  and  then 
increase  it  till  it  is  some  even  sum  of  money  and  put  this 
on  your  pay  roll  just  the  same  as  if  this  fund  were  an 
employee.  No  matter  how  great  the  strain,  no  matter 
how  hard  up  you  are,  put  this  money  aside  even  if  you 
have  to  borrow  money  from  the  bank  to  do  it. 

Then  when  the  great  strain  comes,  as  it  does  come 
to  every  business  man  in  the  world  some  time,  you  will 
have  the  cash  to  meet  it. 


You  are  in  a  position  then  to  be  your  own  broker 
and  loan  yourself  money,  if  you  want  to  do  so,  which  is 
better  business  than  being  comioelled  to  pay  interest  to 
the  banker. 

If  you  will  pardon  me  for  lapsing  into  the  personal 
again  I  will  tell  you  what  I  have  done  in  the  matter.  To 
begin  with,  I  set  aside  a  certain  sum  of  money  each  week 
till  I  had  over  three  hundred  dollars.  When  I  reached 
this  sum  I  went  to  my  banker  and  asked  him  to  buy  a 
five  hundred  dollar  bond  of  a  local  public  service  cor- 
poration and  hold  the  bond  as  collateral  for  the  two  hun- 
dred dollar  loan.  I  paid  him  five  per  cent  on  the  two 
hundred  dollar  loan  and  the  five  hundred  dollar  bond 
paid  me  five  per  cent  so  I  was  three  per  cent  ahead  on 
the  interest  proposition. 

During  the  time  of  this  loan  I  continued  my  sinking 
fund  till  I  got  money  enough  in  it  to  pay  off  the  loan 
and  then  I  kept  at  it  till  I  had  accumulated  two  hundred 
more,  and  then  repeated  the  process  till  I  had  another 
five  hundred  dollar  bond. 

After  I  owned  two  of  these  five  hundred  dollar  bonds 
I  hypothecated  them  with  the  banker  and  had  him  buy 
me  another  and  paid  on  this  one  till  I  cleared  it  up  and 
all  the  interest  on  these  bonds  I,  of  courae,  paid  back 
into  the  sinking  fund  as  the  profit  was  on  the  money  in  it. 

I  have  repeated  this  process  for  many  years  till  now 
I  have  several  of  the  bonds  lying  in  my  safe  deposit  box 
and  when  I  need  some  money  to  discount  a  big  opera 
glass  bill  or,  as  recently  happened,  to  finance  a  change 
of  location,  I  can  simply  slip  one  of  these  bonds  ove^ 
the  counter  at  the  bank  and  get  my  loan  without  being 
under  the  least  obUgation  to  anyone  in  the  world  and 


96  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

the  interest  on  tlie  bond  is  taking  care  of  the  interest 
on  the  loan  at  all  times  and,  in  the  vernacular  of  the 
street,  "I  should  worry!" 

There  are  three  things  which  I  consider  that  any 
optometrist  should  do  if  he  has  made  a  success.  First 
carry  enough  life  insurance  to  take  care  of  those  depend- 
ent on  him  including  creditors ;  second,  own  his  own  home 
and,  third,  have  enough  laid  aside  to  take  care  of  the 
proverbial  rainy  day.  If  I  were  to  outline  a  plan  for 
the  new  man  just  starting  out  I  would  advise  the  insur- 
ance first.  None  of  these  fancy  investment  policies  which 
promise  you  all  sorts  of  dividends  and  that  sort  of  thing, 
for  life  insurance  is  not  an  investment — agents  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding.  The  old-fashioned  "die  to 
win"  insurance  is  the  only  kind  worth  considering  and 
let  the  policy  be  large  enough  to  keep  your  wife  and  chil- 
dren from  present  want  and  to  cover  the  debts  you  owe 
and  no  more.  As  I  have  said  life  insurance  is  insurance 
against  death;  not  an  investment. 

Having  taken  care  of  this,  buy  a  "Why  Pay  Rent?" 
There  was  never  a  time  in  the  history  of  the  world  when 
a  man  can  so  easily  own  his  own  home  as  he  can  now. 

Hundreds  of  men  have  deluded  themselves  out  of  a 
nice  home  by  trying  to  figure  out  how  much  money  the 
builder  is  going  to  make  out  of  them  when  he  sells  them 
a  house  on  the  installment  plan.  If  you  are  one  of  those 
who  has  been  frightened  by  the  high  interest  charges 
on  this  proposition  get  a  pad  and  a  pen  and  make  a  few 
pen  tracks  at  my  suggestion — tracks  toward  a  home  of 
your  own. 

Let  us  suppose  that  you  would  buy  a  house  worth 
about  $5,000.    If  you  did  you  would  be  allowed  to  pay 


for  it  in  montlily  notes  not  exceeding  $40  each.  Of  tliat 
$40  just  one-half  or  $20  would  be  interest,  insurance, 
taxes  and  such  things.  Terrible,  isn't  it?  Fifty  per  cent 
of  your  good  money  thrown  away!    Let's  see  if  it  is! 

If  you  live  in  just  about  such  a  house  now  you  are 
paying  thirty-two  dollars  and  fifty  cents  a  month  rent. 
This  money  is  an  absolute  loss.  The  money  you  are  pay- 
ing in  rent  each  year  is  an  absolute  and  dead  loss  and  it 
amounts  to  $390.  At  $40  per  month,  which  would  be 
your  payment  on  the  house,  yor.  would  pay  out  $480,  or 
exactly  $90  more  than  you  would  pay  in  rent.  Now  these 
$40  per  month  notes  cover  $20  worth  of  interest  and 
charges,  and  $20  goes  on  the  house,  so  you  are  paying 
$240  per  year  on  the  house.  The  difference  between  the 
sums  for  rent  and  purchase  being  $90,  you  are  buying 
$240  worth  of  real  estate  every  year  for  $90. 

Now  in  opposition  to  this,  suppose  you  go  on  paying 
rent  and  put  this  $90  per  year  in  some  savings  institu- 
tion at  the  rate  of  $7.50  per  month  and  receive  3  per  cent 
per  annum  on  your  minimum  deposit  as  is  usual.  The 
sum  total  of  interest  paid  on  such  an  account  will  not 
equal  the  natural  rise  in  value  of  any  piece  of  real  estate 
bought  with  fairly  good  judgment. 

The  other  factor  in  the  matter  is  that  if  a  man  gives 
his  note  he  will  meet  that  note  when  it  is  due,  while  if 
he  has  no  outstanding  obligations  he  will  be  inclined  to 
fritter  away  his  earnings  instead  of  saving  them. 

Yet  another  factor  is  that  the  man  who  buys  a  home 
is  a  married  man,  and  the  woman  never  lived  who  did 
not  want  a  home  of  her  own  and  who  would  not  co-op- 
erate with  her  husband  and  save  to  the  limit  to  have  one. 


98  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

Just  bear  in  mind  these  three  points  in  life  and  you 
can  and  will  be  an  independent  and  successful  man. 

First  insure  your  family  and  creditors  against  your 
death. 

Second,  buy  your  own  home. 

Third,  start  the  Sinking  Fund  habit. 

These  are  the  three  milestones  on  the  road  to  suc- 
cess— the  three  stations  at  which  the  train  bound  for 
prosperity  must  stop. 

To  the  man  who  is  contented  to  trust  all  to  chance 
they  are  of  little  interest,  but  to  the  man  who  is  going 
somewhere,  who  has  a  definite  aim  and  goal  in  view,  they 
are  the  three  points  at  which  he  must  aim  before  success 
will  have  crowned  his  efforts. 

The  mere  getting  of  money  is  not  a  laudable  ambi- 
tion but  the  ambition  to  gain  these  three  points  is  cer- 
tainly a  most  laudable  one. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


PARTNERSHIPS. 

If  I  were  going  to  write  this  chapter  just  to  suit 
myself  it  would  contain  the  one  word,  "Don't"!  But 
there  are  people  who  would  want  more  reasons  for  it 
than  my  simple  word  and  here  are  just  a  few  of  the  thou- 
sands that  I  could  mention. 

My  reason  for  saying  don't  take  a  partner,  if  you 
can  help  it,  is  because  partnerships  are  like  matrimony, 
a  thing  to  be  entered  into  only  when  you  can  no  longer 
resist  the  temptation.  It  is  one  of  the  easiest  things  on 
earth  to  get  into  and  one  of  the  very  hardest  to  get  out 
of.  It's  like  the  man  who  caught  the  bear  and  then 
shrieked  for  someone  to  come  and  help  him  turn  it  loose. 

Borrow  money,  hire  more  help,  even  bring  your  wife 
and  children  down  to  the  store,  but  don't,  for  heaven's 
sake,  yoke  yourself  and  your  destiny  up  with  some  other 
man! 

If  you  want  to  expand,  if  you  want  to  go  into  busi- 
ness for  yourself,  if  you  want  to  buy  a  bigger  stock  and 
you  cannot  do  it  without  taking  in  a  partner,  then  you 
are  not  yet  ready  to  expand,  to  go  into  business  for  your- 
self, or  to  buy  heavier. 

When  you  have  earned  the  money  to  go  into  busi- 
ness, you  will  know  better  how  to  handle  that  business; 
when  you  have  made  the  money  out  of  your  business  it, 
is  time  enough  to  enlarge  it,  and  when  you  have  saved 


100  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

the  money  to  buy  a  larger  stock  tlien  you  are  ready  to 
buy  it  and  will  buy  it  with  more  judgment! 

There  is  not  one  partnership  in  ten  where,  down  in 
his  heart,  each  member  of  the  concern  does  not  feel  that 
he  is  dragging  the  other  fellow  as  well  as  the  business 
on  his  shoulders  as  a  load.  Each  feels  that  on  him  the 
success  of  the  business  depends  and  more  new  ventures 
in  the  optical  line  fail  because  of  policy  disagreements 
between  partners  than  from  any  other  one  cause. 

In  a  partnership  there  are  two  families  to  feed,  two 
heads  to  be  consulted  and  two  of  everything  in  the  mat- 
ter of  expense,  while  a  single  head  is  best  to  pursue  a 
certain  outlined  policy  on  to  the  goal  of  success. 

If  a  partner  is  inevitable,  try  and  give  him  credit 
for  all  the  good  he  does  for  the  firm.  The  man  who  sells 
the  tickets  out  in  front  of  the  side  show  may  not  be  able 
to  swallow  a  sword  but  the  sword  swallower  would  do  a 
l^oor  business  without  him. 

But  the  happiest,  most  independent  optometrist  is 
the  one  who  has  no  one  to  blame  for  his  failures,  no  one 
to  share  his  successes  and  no  one  with  whom  he  is  com- 
pelled to  divide  his  profits.  The  firm  as  such  may  not 
make  so  much  money  but  the  happy  proprietor  may  put 
it  all  down  in  his  savings  account  and  treasure  it  all  to 
himself. 

Partnerships  and  law  suits  have  ever  traveled  hand 
in  hand  and  the  optical  business,  which  gets  tangled  up 
in  a  court  of  law,  had  just  as  well  be  knocked  in  the  head 
with  a  mallet. 

If  two  o)'  more  men  vntsf  unite  in  an  optical  ven- 
ture, then  the  only  sensible  plan  is  to  turn  the  whole  mat- 
ter into  a  stock  company. 


PARTNERSHIPS  101 

The  incorporation  fever  has  become  almost  an  epi- 
demic in  this  country,  but  it  is  not  a  disease  that  the 
business  doctors  are  very  often  called  in  to  treat  for  it 
is  more  often  a  success  than  a  failure.  Fundamentally 
I  know  of  no  objection  to  incorporating.  In  many  cases 
it  is  almost  a  necessity  and  in  a  large  majority  of  cases 
it  is  advantageous. 

Where  a  partnership  exists  incorporation  is  always 
desirable  because  in  a  court  of  law  any  man  who  owns 
an  interest  in  a  business  on  a  partnership  basis  is  liable 
for  all  the  debts  of  the  business  in  case  his  partners  can- 
not pay.  He  is  not  only  liable  to  the  extent  of  his  inter- 
est but  is  liable  to  the  extent  of  his  means. 

In  case  of  an  incorporation,  the  owner  of  stock  is 
liable  for  nothing  provided  the  certificate  of  stock  states 
clearly  that  the  stock  is  non-assessable. 

Again,  if  a  partner  in  an  optical  store  gets  a  grouch 
at  the  way  things  are  going  he  can  tie  the  whole  business 
up,  while  the  difference  is  being  adjudicated,  and  can  tie 
it  up  in  a  mesh  of  legal  red  tape  until  it  is  ruined  before 
it  can  be  disentagied.  But  should  the  business  be  in  the 
form  of  a  stock  company  he  can  vote  the  amount  of  his 
stock  in  any  deliberation  of  the  company,  but  in  case  the 
majority  of  the  stockholders  decide  on  a  line  of  action 
contrary  to  his  opinion  he  must  submit  with  docility  or 
profanity,,  as  he  sees  fit,  but  submit  he  must. 

In  a  business  owned  by  one  man  the  reasons  for 
forming  a  stock  company  are  fewer  but  equally  as  good, 
because  almost  invariably  it  is  done  to  secure  more  money 
to  enlarge  the  business.  Many  a  prosperous  optical 
business  can  be  improved  with  more  capital  for  the  pur- 
chase of  additional  stock,  or  to  do  additional  advertising, 


102  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

and  the  formation  of  a  stock  company  is  undoubtedly 
the  best  way  to  obtain  it.  Many  men  prefer  to  incor- 
porate and  sell  shares  in  their  business  rather  than  go 
to  the  bank  and  borrow  the  money.  If  he  borrows  and 
is  able  to  pay  back  then  he  is  better  off,  for  he  gets  all 
the  profit  of  the  increased  business,  whereas  if  he  sells 
stock  he  must  divide  the  profit  with  his  stockholders. 

Another  advantage  of  the  stock  company  idea  is  that 
it  makes  a  good  firm's  credit  better.  On  the  contrary,  it 
makes  a  weak  firm's  credit  poorer.  Once  each  year  every 
incor23oration  must  give  to  the  courts  a  statement  of  its 
liabilities  and  assets  and  this  statement  must  be  made 
under  oath. 

If  the  creditors  or  anyone  who  is  interested  in  the 
affairs  of  the  concern  is  curious  as  to  its  workings  they 
may  go  and  see  this  statement,  which  is  a  matter  of  court 
record,  and  its  falsification  is  a  criminal  offence. 

I  know  of  one  case  where  articles  of  incorporation 
would  have  saved  three  men  from  absolute  ruin.  Three 
optometrists  of  my  acquaintance  took  a  flyer  in  a  stone 
quarry.  They  put  up  $3,000  each  and  hired  a  foreman 
and  put  a  gang  of  men  to  work.  The  foreman  was  care- 
less and  one  morning  a  blast  went  off  prematurely  and 
added  nine  Italian  faces  to  the  population  of  Heaven. 
The  widows  wailed  and  then  sued  for  damages,  which 
the  court  allowed  to  the  tune  of  $4,000  per  man.  The 
total  was  $3G,000  and  when  the  assets  of  the  three  part- 
ners was  gathered  in  a  bunch  it  amounted  to  $28,000,  of 
which  one  man  had  $1,000,  another  $3,500  and  the  other 
man  the  balance!  Had  that  quarry  been  a  stock  company 
the  only  liability  on  either  man,  on  non-assessable  stock. 


PARTNERSHIPS  103 

would  have  been  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  the  quarry 
and  the  tools  used  in  working  it. 

There  is  another  advantage  of  the  stock  company 
plan  also,  and  that  is  the  existence  of  a  board  of  directors 
who  meet  from  time  to  time  and  after  conference  decide 
on  the  policy  of  the  firm,  and  several  heads  are,  of  course, 
less  liable  to  run  off  at  a  tangent  than  one. 

Again,  in  case  of  a  man's  death  an  estate  has  a  much 
more  tangible  asset  in  shares  of  stock  than  it  has  in  a 
partnership  or  part  ownership,  as  the  only  method  of 
disposing  of  a  partnership,  in  case  of  a  disagreement,  is 
to  throw  the  entire  concern  into  court  or  accept  the  heir 
of  the  former  partner  as  a  new  partner  which,  in  the 
case  of  a  widow  or  an  inexperienced  person,  is  poor  pol- 
icy for  an  optical  establishment. 

Where  a  father  desires  to  raise  his  sons  up  in  his 
business  as  his  successors  there  is  no  plan  which  is  bet- 
ter than  the  stock  company  idea.  He  may  then  give  his 
sons  shares  in  the  business,  in  addition  to  the  salary  he 
pays  them  for  their  services,  and  the  amount  of  that  sal- 
ary is  decided  by  the  stockholders  themselves,  which  gives 
each  son  a  voice  in  the  salary  paid  to  his  brothers. 

If  the  father  desires,  he  can  retain  51  per  cent  of  the 
stock  and  thus  retain  actual  control  of  the  business,  up 
to  the  time  of  his  death,  and  yet  not  make  his  sons  feel 
that  they  are  mere  hirelings  waiting  for  him  to  die  before 
they  can  come  into  actual  ownership  of  the  business. 

In  some  optical  stores  I  recall  faithful  employes 
have  been  rewarded  in  the  same  way  and  although  it  does 
not  give  the  stockholder  any  actual  control  in  the  busi- 
ness, yet  it  does  give  him  a  certainly  of  not  being  tossed 


104  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

into  the  discard  wlien  he  has  played  his  hand  to  the  best 
of  his  ability. 

But  the  man  who  owns  his  own  business  without  the 
annoyance  of  any  outsider  is  the  happy  man.  The  man 
who,  when  he  fits  a  pair  of  spectacles  and  fits  them  well 
knowing  that  all  the  resultant  business  from  this  satis- 
factory job  is  going  to  pile  the  dollars  in  his  own  pocket, 
is  the  fellow  who  can  look  the  world  in  the  eye  and  tell 
it  to  go  to  the  deuce ! 

If  you  must  have  money  make  out  a  statement  of 
your  liabilities  and  assets  and  take  them  to  your  banker 
and  show  the  whole  proposition  to  him.  Then,  if  he 
refuses  to  loan  you  what  you  need,  you  may  be  pretty 
positive  that  the  plan  you  have  in  mind  is  not  a  good  one 
and  you  had  better  abandon  it. 

Sink  or  swim,  live  or  die,  on  your  own  merits  is  the 
better  plan  and  leave  partnerships  and  stock  companies 
alone;  but  of  the  two  evils,  if  you  must  choose  one,  choose 
the  lesser  which,  without  doubt,  is  the  stock  company. 

Above  all  things,  if  you  go  into  a  partnership  or  a 
stock  company,  hire  a  good  lawyer  and  pay  him  a  good 
price  to  look  after  your  interests  in  the  matter.  More 
men  have  lost  money  signing  papers  they  did  not  under- 
stand than  most  any  other  way.  Pay  a  lawyer  to  look 
into  them  before  you  sign. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


EMPLOYES  AND  WINNERS. 

There  are  two  points  on  which  I  desire  to  caution 
every  young  man  who  has  just  cracked  the  shell  of  an 
employe  and  launched  into  the  business  world  on  his  own 
hook. 

The  very  first  one  of  all  is  the  handling  of  your  own 
employes.  The  average  proprietor  of  an  optical  store 
does  not  handle  his  own  employes  as  he  wished  to  be 
handled  when  he  was  on  the  pay  roll  himself.  An  op- 
tician may  be  a  good  manager,  have  good  people  hired, 
and  pay  them  good  salaries,  and  yet  fail  in  one  partic- 
ular. His  co-workers  are  of  infiaitely  greater  importance 
to  him  than  the  people  to  whom  he  sells  his  goods.  He 
gives  the  people  to  whom  he  sells  his  spectacles  a  dollar's 
worth  of  value  for  every  dollar  they  put  into  his  cash 
register,  and  yet  you  would  consider  yourself  a  poor 
salesman  if  you  did  not  add  to  that  dollar 's  value  a  little 
kindness,  a  few  pleasant  words,  a  little  bit  of  flattery. 
Why  can  you  not  do  the  same  with  your  employes! 

There  is  a  sort  of  service  which  money  will  not  buy 
from  the  people  who  work  for  you.  It  is  the  sort  of  serv- 
ice which  makes  a  man  come  back  after  work  hours  to 
look  after  something  without  being  told.  It  is  the  sort 
of  service  which  keeps  your  employes  rooting  for  the 
store  both  during  business  hours  and  outside  of  it.    It 


106  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

is  the  sort  of  service  which  makes  an  employe  speak  a 
good  word  for  the  store  when  out  in  public  and  solicit 
patronage  for  it.  Mere  salary  will  not  get  this  service, 
but  a  few  kind  words,  a  little  bit  of  subtle  flattery,  or  a 
little  interest  in  their  private  affairs  will. 

If  you  have  a  boy  in  your  place  who  is  interested  in 
baseball  it  will  do  you  no  harm  and  him  a  lot  of  good  if 
you  will  ask  him  what  he  thinks  of  the  latest  recruit  on 
the  home  team,  if  you  speak  to  him  about  the  game  of 
the  day  before,  or  if  you  call  his  attention  to  some  play 
made  by  a  player  you  know  to  be  a  favorite  of  his. 

If  one  of  the  boys  in  your  place  has  a  motor  boat 
or  a  canoe  and  you  happen  across  a  story  or  an  article 
in  some  of  your  papers  or  magazines  on  the  subject  which 
is  his  particular  hobby,  it  is  very  little  trouble  for  you 
to  bring  it  to  him. 

If  one  of  your  employes  has  a  new  wife  or  a  new 
baby,  it  is  the  least  that  you  can  do  to  make  inquiry  from 
time  to  time  as  to  the  progress  of  his  family  and  let  him 
open  up  and  tell  you  about  it. 

These  are  small  things — simply  the  common  courte- 
sies of  life — and  yet  how  seldom  do  you  see  an  employer 
with  business  sense  enough  to  use  them  as  a  means  to 
tie  his  clerks  to  him  with  bonds  of  steel. 

Don't  think  for  a  moment  that  they  are  not  working 
the  same  game  on  you.  Don't  imagine  because  you  hap- 
pen to  be  the  "boss"  that  the  boys  are  not  handing  you 
what  the  kids  in  the  street  call  "bull  con,"  for  you  are 
getting  it  every  day  of  your  life.  You  need  not  sniff; 
It's  true!    ^Vhy  not  pay  them  back  in  their  own  coin! 

Foolishness?  Beneath  your  dignity?  Let  me  tell 
you  that  this  is  the  sort  of  foolishness  which  binds  a 


EMPLOYES   AND    WINNERS  1U7 

business  house  closer  together  than  all  the  money  in  the 
world  can  bind  it.  It's  the  sort  of  foolishness  which 
begets  what  the  French  call  esprit  de  corps  and  what 
the  baseball  fans  call  team  work,  the  kind  that  mere 
money  will  not  buy ;  that  long  pull  and  strong  pull  alto- 
gether in  the  interest  of  the  firm  which  makes  a  winner 
out  of  any  optical  establishment  from  the  little  two-man 
store  to  the  big  shop  employing  several  hundred  men. 

The  second  point  which  I  wish  to  particularly  call 
to  attention  is  the  matter  of  your  associates  outside  of 
business  hours.  My  experience  has  been  that  men  are 
just  about  as  broad  as  the  company  they  keep. 

If  you  find  a  man  who  associates  with  big  men  in 
the  business  world,  men  who  do  things  on  a  $10,000  scale, 
you  will  find  he  is  a  bigger,  more  up-to-date,  broader 
gauge  man  that  the  one  who  spends  his  time  with  the 
little  fellows. 

It's  an  odd  fact  that  not  one  man  in  ten  selects  his 
associates.  He  will  carefully  pick  his  clerks,  his  trousers, 
his  wife,  his  partner  or  his  plug  tobacco,  but  his  asso- 
ciates, who  have  the  greatest  effect  on  his  moral  charac- 
ter and  mental  makeup,  come  to  him  in  an  absolutely  hap- 
hazard manner. 

This  is  worth  a  little  thought  from  any  man  in  busi- 
ness. Why  not  pick  some  friends  among  men  who  have 
made  a  success  in  the  race  of  life — men  of  affairs,  win- 
ners? Get  out  and  mix  with  the  winners,  for  success  is 
contagious  and  you  may  catch  it.  Attend  the  meetings 
of  your  optical  society,  your  board  of  trade,  your  busi- 
ness organizations  of  all  descriptions  and  your  ideas  as 
well  as  your  business  will  feel  the  broadening  and  expand- 
ing influence  of  these  associations. 


108  THE  BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

Creeping  into  the  lives  of  opticians  everywhere  is 
the  realization  that  co-operation  is  better  than  competi- 
tion, frankness  better  than  secrecy  and  square  dealing 
better  than  crookedness :  that  a  competitor  is  not  of  nec- 
essity a  villain  and  an  enemy. 

Agreements  between  competitors  as  to  business  hours, 
exchange  of  credit  information  and  a  general  business 
friendliness  is  the  tendency  of  the  times,  and  the  most 
successful  men  are  the  men  who  are  leaders  in  these 
movements. 

This  idea  is  fostered  by  commercial  organizations 
of  every  description,  and  the  optician  who  holds  out  of 
these  organizations  because  of  the  small  expense  entailed 
will  shed  many  bitter  dollars  in  the  long  run,  although 
he  may  save  pennies  in  the  beginning. 

Birds  of  a  feather  flock  together  and  a  business  man 
is  known  by  the  company  he  keeps. 

Get  these  two  principles  deeply  impressed  on  your 
mind  and  it  will  make  your  road  to  business  success  an 
infinitely  easier  one.  There  is  a  road  which  runs  between 
the  two  points  Prosperity  and  Adversity  and  the  time 
made  on  this  road  is  the  fastest  known  in  the  world.  The 
thoughts  which  I  have  tried  to  implant  here  are  two  good 
pushes  out  of  the  station  of  Adversity  toward  the  goal 
of  Prosperity,  and  if  you  will  acce^it  the  boost  you  will 
find  that  you  will  arrive  at  the  new  station  much  more 
quickly  than  you  otherwise  would. 

Develop  unity  of  purpose  and  house  loyalty  in  your 
clerks  and  then  get  out  among  the  real  big  men  of  your 
line,  and  you  will  find  that  you  have  perfected  a  machine 
at  home  and  abroad  which  will  withstand  the  shocks  of 
dull  times  and  slow  seasons. 


CHAPTER  XV 

CHASING  RAINBOWS. 

I  don't  know  of  anything  that  will  make  a  child  lose 
so  much  of  the  enjoyment  he  gets  ont  of  his  regular  play 
as  to  chase  to  the  end  of  the  rainbow  to  find  the  fabled 
pot  of  gold  which  lies  just  where  its  end  touches  the 
ground.  The  poor  little  fellow  believing  in  the  fable  will 
chase  through  brambles  and  tear  his  clothes;  he  will 
wade  through  swamps  and  get  his  feet  wet  and  take  cold, 
and  he  will  bruise  and  hurt  himself  falling  over  the  stones 
and  rough  places  only  to  find  at  the  end  of  the  journey, 
when  worn  and  tired,  that  he  had  just  as  well  kept  on 
with  his  play  as  the  end  of  the  rainbow  is  further  away 
than  when  he  started. 

This  is  all  called  to  mind  by  watching  the  young 
optometrist  and  his  foolish  belief  in  the  fables  of  the 
' '  get-rich-quick ' '  man  and  his  hundreds  of  foolish  stories 
of  fabulous  wealth  which  lies  just  ahead  at  the  end  of 
the  rainbow,  and  I  have  seen  many  an  optometrist  who 
had  returned  from  the  chase  with  money  gone,  business 
neglected,  and  an  air  of  discouragement  and  sick-heart- 
edness  which  makes  me  almost  feel  like  preaching  a  ser- 
mon with  "Stick  to  your  business"  for  a  text! 

Whenever  I  see  a  young  optometrist  looking  at  the 
stock  quotations  in  the  daily  paper  I  begin  to  wonder 
what  the  place  will  bring  when  the  auctioneer  gets  to  his 


110  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

"Third  and  last  call!  Going,  going,  gone!  Sold  to  the 
little  man  with  a  wart  on  his  nose  over  there  in  the  cor- 
ner ! ' ' 

I  know  just  how  you  feel  about  it  so  don't  talk  back 
to  me!  "Just  a  little  flyer.  Just  a  few  shares  on  mar- 
gin." I  have  heard  it  so  often  that  I  can  recite  it  by 
heart!  I  had  just  as  soon  see  a  friend  of  mine  with  a 
hypodermic  needle  loaded  with  morphia  shooting  it  into 
his  arm,  "just  for  fun,"  or  see  him  in  a  hop  joint  hitting 
the  pipe  just  for  a  lark !  The  man  who  fools  with  stocks 
on  margin  is  chasing  a  rainbow  and  at  its  end  is  rags 
and  tatters  and  misery. 

I  have  watched  the  butcher,  the  baker  and  the  can- 
dlestick maker,  and  all  the  other  fellows  who  buy  and 
sell  for  gain,  and  I  have  seen  few  who  are  not  pessimistic 
about  the  business  in  which  they  are  engaged.  Some 
maker  of  aphorisms  has  said  that  a  pessimist  is  a  fellow 
who  of  two  evils  chooses  both  and  all  optometrists  agree 
that  the  optical  business  is  the  worst  on  earth  and  all 
too  frequently  they  begin  to  look  around  for  some  rain- 
bow to  chase. 

Maybe  they  turn  their  attention  to  the  stock  market ; 
maybe  it  is  the  man  with  the  hand  book  on  the  races; 
maybe  it  is  sitting  up  all  night  trying  to  catch  the  caudal 
appendage  to  a  Robert-tailed  flush;  maybe  it  is  the  pur- 
chase of  some  shares  in  a  new  patent,  but  no  matter  what 
form  the  rainbow  chasing  assumes  it  is  an  indication 
that  the  optometrist  who  begins  it  is  standing  at  the  top 
of  a  tobaggon  slide  with  grease  on  the  seat  of  his  trousers 
and  business  oblivion  at  the  foot. 

In  the  first  place  there  is  no  greater  indication  that 
an  optometrist  does  not  know  half  about  his  own  busi- 


CHASING   RAIXBOWS  111 

ness  or  he  would  not  be  looking  with  such  longing  and 
envy  at  other  lines. 

There  is  no  better  business  than  the  optical  busi- 
ness !    Read  that  line  again. 

Take  it  from  any  angle  you  choose  there  is  no  occu- 
pation on  the  top  of  God's  green  earth  that  offers  so 
many  inducements.  If  a  man  is  seeking  to  do  good  to 
humanity  there  is  no  better  opportunity  than  to  relieve 
eye  suffering  and  no  profession  on  earth  which  is  in  such 
general  need  of  elevation  from  the  slough  of  low  prices, 
incompetent  refracting  and  rotten  mechanical  work! 
There  is  room  and  board  both  at  the  top  of  every  profes- 
sion and  this  of  ours  is  no  exception. 

There  are  no  styles  or  seasons  in  this  business.  Goods 
bought  ten  years  ago  are  as  good  to  sell  as  if  bought  yes- 
terday and  the  goods  which  sell  in  early  and  late  seasons 
bother  the  optometrist  not  at  all,  where  the  dealer  in 
wearing  apparel  of  all  sorts  must  sell  his  spring  goods 
by  the  first  of  Jirne  or  know  that  they  will  lie  on  his 
hands  till  next  June  only  to  face  the  certainty  that  next 
June  will  find  the  goods  so  out  of  style  as  to  render  them 
unsalable. 

In  the  line  of  food  stuffs,  the  merchant  must  sell  his 
stuff  before  it  grows  stale  and  unfit  to  eat  and  there  is 
no  line  which  does  not  have  its  worries  of  this  sort  save 
ours. 

When  it  comes  to  profits  there  is  likely  no  line  which 
pays  so  heavy  a  gross  profit  as  the  optical  line.  In  com- 
mon with  all  mercantile  lines  which  require  some  profes- 
sional skill,  the  profit  is  in  proportion  to  the  skill  and 
so  taken  from  every  possible  angle  I  insist  that  a  man 
who  cannot  make  good  in  this  business  had  better  not 


112  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF   OPTICS 

try  another  but  had  better  begin  to  take  in  floors  to  scrub 
and  get  out  of  business  life  entirely. 

All  a  man  has  to  do  is  to  stick  to  it,  study  it  and 
play  the  game  he  knows  without  chasing  rainbows,  and 
his  success  is  certain. 

They  tell  a  tale  of  one  optometrist  who  bought  a  sea 
shore  lot  on  speculation  and  when  he  went  out  one  spring 
to  plant  it  in  millet  seed  the  tide  was  in  and  he  came 
back  to  town  to  trade  his  millet  seed  for  halibut  eggs, 
and  yet  that  man  has  the  reputation  of  being  a  good 
business  man  although  I  would  no  more  trust  such  a  fel- 
low to  handle  my  money  than  I  would  hold  a  cow  for  a 
cock-eyed  butcher  to  hit  it  in  the  head  with  an  axe !  The 
money  he  spent  on  the  lot  invested  in  advertising,  a  new 
instrument  for  his  examination  room  or  a  new  grind- 
stone in  his  shop,  would  have  paid  handsome  dividends 
but  he  had  to  chase  the  suburban  real  estate  rainbow 
with  the  usual  result. 

Stick  to  the  game  you  know!  Maude  Adams  makes 
$100,000  a  season  and  Dave  Warfield  is  worth  a  million 
dollars;  but  just  imagine  those  two  trying  to  run  your 
optical  store !  They  would  make  just  about  as  much  of 
a  success  of  it  as  you  and  your  wife  would  of  playing 
the  parts  they  play ;  yet  I  doubt  not  that  they  would  look 
on  the  sweet  peace  of  running  your  little  optical  store  as 
a  haven  of  infinite  rest  just  as  you  have  sighed  at  times 
for  the  plaudits  of  the  multitude  when  you  gazed  on 
some  grand  opera  tenor  cavorting  around  the  stage !  Just 
stop  a  minute  and  think  how  those  bow  legs  of  yours 
would  look  encased  in  a  pair  of  green  silk  tights!  For 
heaven's  sake,  take  a  tumble  to  yourself  and  quit  chasing 
rainbows ! 


CHASING  RAINBOWS  113 

It  is  the  unattainable  which  ever  haunts  the  corri- 
dors of  heart's  desire.  The  lily  fingered  artist  longs  to 
club  a  tow-headed  mule  over  a  ten-acre  lot  while  the  plow 
boy  dreams  of  disturbing  the  ambient  in  our  legislative 
halls.  If  either  left  his  work  to  live  his  dream  he  would 
hit  old  mother  earth  with  a  D.  S.  T.  which,  in  the  language 
of  the  cub  reporter,  is  dull,  sickening  thud !  Cut  out  the 
rainbow  chasing  and  study  more  about  the  adjustment 
of  a  pair  of  Kryptoks  so  the  patient  can  see  through  the 
reading  part  without  stepping  as  high  as  a  string-halted 
horse  on  the  street ! 

Put  your  mind  on  your  business.  Men  all  over  the 
country  are  riding  in  five  thousand  dollar  automobiles 
on  the  money  they  have  made  in  the  optical  business  but 
they  are  not  the  men  who  have  chased  rainbows.  They 
are  men  who  had  their  minds  on  their  business.  They 
were  not  men  of  genius  but  men  who  worked  like  the 
very  devil  at  their  own  business. 

I  would  not  trust  any  optometrist  who  dabbled  in 
the  stock  market  any  more  than  I  would  allow  a  barber 
to  shave  me  while  he  was  watching  a  dog  fight  across 
the  street,  and  the  jobbers  of  this  country  feel  the  same 
way  about  it!  Any  man  who  chases  financial  rainbows 
is  some  day  going  to  find  his  credit  bad  without  knowing 
why.  The  jobbing  houses  of  this  coimtry  are  not  going 
to  allow  him  to  play  fool  with  their  money. 

There  has  never  been  a  time  in  the  history  of  the 
world  when  good  optometrists  and  good  opticians  were 
in  such  demand!  There  has  never  been  a  time  in  the 
history  of  the  business  when  good  work  was  so  highly 
appreciated  and  there  has  never  been  a  time  when  the 
public  was  so  well  educated  to  know  good  work  when  it 


114  THE   BUSINESS   SIDE   OF  OPTICS 

sees  it!  This  means  that  there  was  never  a  time  in  the 
history  of  the  world  when  there  is  so  much  opportunity 
for  a  good  man  to  make  money  and  never  a  time  when 
the  incompetent  man  had  such  tough  sledding!  If  you 
are  not  making  money  it's  your  own  fault,  and  when  you 
acknowledge  it  you  also  acknowledge  yourself  an  incom- 
petent and  a  failure ! 

Millions  are  being  paid  out  every  day  by  a  weak-eyed 
public  to  men  who  know  the  business,  whose  sole  quali- 
fication is  that  they  know  the  work  in  which  they  are 
engaged  and  are  attending  to  it !  From  the  optical  stores 
of  every  city  in  the  country  is  going  up  a  cry  for  employes 
who  know  their  work  well  enough  to  be  trusted  with  a 
job  of  any  importance! 

But  despite  all  these  good  conditions  the  optometrist 
shows  a  disposition  to  become  a  rainbow  chaser  and  it  is 
my  endeavor  to  flag  a  few  before  the  rails  spread  and  a 
little  business  is  ditched  somewhere  in  the  great  com- 
mercial desert  which  is  filled  with  the  whitening  bones 
of  financial  rainbow  chasers! 

The  man  who  builds  an  optical  business  in  these 
days  of  cut  prices  and  department  store  competition  must 
eschew  pin  pool  and  poker;  he  must  cut  out  the  hand 
book  and  the  stock  market ;  he  must  duck  the  bang-tailed 
ponies  and  the  stock  company  promoters,  and  study  the 
optical  business  from  the  chemical  composition  of  the 
glass  which  goes  into  the  lenses  to  their  results  on  the 
nose  of  the  ultimate  wearer ! 

When  he  sells  a  tortoise  shell  frame  he  must  be  able 
to  give  the  maiden  name  of  the  mother  of  the  turtle  on 
which  it  grew  and  the  exact  location  of  the  puddle  in 
which  it  was  caught!    T\Tien  he  sells  a  pair  of  smoked 


CHASING   RAINBOWS  115 

glasses  lie  must  be  able  to  tell  who  smoked  them  and 
why!  He  must  know  the  game  from  soup  to  nms  and 
the  only  way  he  can  hope  to  do  so  is  to  keep  his  mind 
on  it  early  and  late  and  not  on  the  pot  of  gold  at  the  end 
of  some  financial  rainbow ! 

All  that  the  public  demands  of  you  is  that  you  be 
the  best  optometrist  in  your  town.  If  you  serve  them 
just  a  little  better  than  the  other  fellow,  then  you  will 
have  success !  In  the  markets  of  this  world  money  was 
never  so  cheap  as  right  now!  It  was  never  so  easy  to 
get  as  right  now !  People  were  never  so  willing  to  spend 
it  as  they  are  this  minute!  It  all  lies  with  you  whether 
you  get  it  or  not  and  all  you  need  to  do  is  to  put  in  the 
time  you  waste  thinking  over  rainbow  projects  and  use  it 
in  studying  your  own  business  and  you  will  win. 

The  maker  of  maxims  is  merely  a  tailor  of  truth.  He 
rarely  has  the  figure  to  wear  gracefully  the  garments  he 
makes.  I  know  the  reason  I  am  not  doing  all  the  optical 
business  in  my  own  city  is  because  I  am  not  enough  bet- 
ter than  the  other  fellows  who  are  here.  In  common  with 
you  and  the  rest  of  them  I  am  getting  all  I  deserve !  But 
I  do  know  this,  that  I  am  eating  regularly  and  do  not 
owe  a  dollar  in  the  world,  and  what  I  have  I  got  by  stick- 
ing to  spectacles  and  every  time  I  have  wandered  off 
after  strange  gods  I  have  been  stung! 

Stick  to  the  spectacles  and  win,  chase  the  rainbows 
and  you  lose ! 


y 


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